NOVELS OF THE WEEK.*
Mn. STANLEY WEYMAN, who began as a disciple of Trollops and deviated into the paths of adventurous romance, has grounded his reputation on a firmer basis in his last two novels. Shrewsbury was not only a solidly constructed historical novel, but an extremely interesting, if not exactly attractive, character study. In The Castle Inn we find a happy combination of the qualities of his earlier and later works, —alert narrative, and wealth of incident, coupled with care- ful portraiture and development of character. The principal dramatis personx are not psychologically stationary as in most "cloak and sword" romances. Sir George Soane, who adopts the role of the knight-errant out of mere curiosity, proves in his own person the truth of Steele's saying that love can be a liberal education. The Macaroni of the opening chapters acquits himself as a chivalrous gentleman in the sequel, and there is growth, too, in the heroine, who at the outset billy deserves the epithet farouche applied to her by the author, just as there is degeneracy in the tuft-hunting don. The • (1.) The Castle Inn. By Stanley Weyman. London : Smith, Elder, and 0o. — (2.) Gloria Mundi. By Harold Frederic. London W. Heinemann.—' (3) Four for a !Fortune. By Albert Lee. London: Harper and Brothers.--• (4.) The Enchanted Stone a Romance. By Charles Lee.i. Hind. London: A. and C. Black.—(3.) Two Fortunes and Old Patch. By T. F. Dale and F. B. Slaughter. London : Archibald Constable and Co.—(60 The Chikt of Pleasure. Transiiited from the Italian of Gabriele &Annunzio, by Georgina Harding. With an Introduction and verse Translation by Arthur Symons. London: W. Heinemann.—(7.) Hollinhurst. By Frances A. Coldicott. London: Chapman and Hall.—(3.) The Altar of Life. By May Bateman. London Duckworth and Co.—(9.) A Hard Master. By H. H. Cornwall Legh. London : Service and Paton.—(10.) Fitch and his Fortunes. By George Dick. London: Elliot Stock.—(11.) The Prince and the Undertaker, and what they Undertook. By Riccardo Stephens. London : Sands and Co.—(12.) The Minister's Conversion. 14^ L Hooper. London : A. and C. Black.
scene is laid in Oxford and Wiltshire, the time is 1767, and the most stirring part of the story grows out of a meeting of the principal characters at the Castle Inn at Marlborough, the fabric of which is incorporated in the Old House of the modern College. Sheer curiosity has induced Sir George Soane, a young man of fashion, to interest himself in the foster- daughter of a College porter, who has died of rough usage received at the hands of some swaggering gownsmen. The girl is beautiful, accomplished beyond her station, and Sir George, being impressionable and adventurous, espouses her quarrel and fights a duel with the chief culprit. Now Julia Masterson, the adopted child of the College porter, is a claimant to the Soane estates, and in pursuance of her claim proceeds to the Castle Inn with her legal adviser to lay the matter before the great Lord Chatham, formerly Soane's guardian and trustee to the estate. Soane, wholly ignorant of her claim, meets her at the inn, falls in love, and offers her marriage, which she is disposed to accept. At this junc- ture she is kidnapped by Dunborough—the same ruffian with whom Sir George had fought—abetted by the tuft-hunting parson, and though escaping his clutches, falls into the hands of an equally unprincipled scoundrel, Bully Pomeroy. Julia's abduction and imprisonment and Sir George's pursuit is really about the best piece of postchaise sensationalism with which we are acquainted. Finally, when the poor heroine has been rescued, and one of the bullies has killed the other, her dreams of aristocratic parentage are shat- tered by the discovery of a missing register finally disposing of her claim, and she is apparently condemned to return to obscurity. Only apparently, though, for Sir George rises to the occasion, and renews his suit in an admirably contrived scene where Julia has assumed the garb of a servant. Mr. Weyman gives us a few striking glimpses of Lord Chatham, but The Castle Inn is, strictly speaking, less of an historical novel than Shrews-bury. As a study of Georgian manners, however, the work takes high rank. Mr. Weyman steers happily in his dialogue between " Wardour Street" English and jarring neologisms, and if he is not an author who invites quotation on the score of the superlative literary quality of his work, his style is admirably terse, appropriate, and free from artifice. The novel, it may be added, has a frontispiece which will commend it to all loyal Marlburians,—a reproduction of the water-colour drawing which hangs in the school library of the old inn which formed the nucleus of the buildings opened in 1843.
The remarkable, if undisciplined, talent shown by the late Mr. Harold Frederic in Illumination, and the publicity given to the tragic circumstances of his recent untimely death, render the dispassionate criticism of his posthumous novel no easy matter. Gloria Mundi is in no sense of the word an ordinary novel: it is by turns an indictment of the British social system, a pamphlet in favour of the emancipation of women, an analysis of the peculiar traits of the Jews, and, above all, a revelation of the author's temperament. Of that faculty of self-effacement of which Tourgueneff was perhaps the most remarkable example, Mr. Frederic was almost entirely destitute. Not that he moralises in his own person ; it is rather that he makes us constantly feel that the dramatis persona are acting as his mouthpieces. Still, in spite of this intrusion of the author's impulsive personality in moods varying from trucu- lence to extreme sentimentality, the book is curiously inter- esting viewed merely as a story. Gloria Mundi is the romance of a dukedom. Christian Torr, alias Tower, is, though he knows it not until he is twenty-six, the grandson of the Duke of Glastonbury, and son of Lord Ambrose Torr, a brilliant young officer of tarnished fame who had to fly the country, and, dropping his rank and disguising his name, served before his death as a soldier of fortune under several flags. By a wholesale mortality in the direct line, Christian, who was born and bred in France, in complete ignorance of his real origin, becomes the heir, and is summoned to England by Lord Julius, the old Duke's brother and financier, to be intro- duced to the family. It can easily be imagined that the position of Christian, an abnormally sensitive young man who has hitherto supported himself by teaching, does not own a dress-suit, and can neither handle a gun nor sit a horse, is not partioularly pleasant. Lord Julius more or leas explodes him on his cousins (who never dreamed of his existence), and the effect is somewhat volcanic. It is always trying to be ousted from the post of heir-presumptive to a dukedom, doubly so
when you are as desperately impecunious and as utterly
ill-
conditioned as Captain Edward Torr. Christian, however, finds staunch friends in his grand-uncle, Lord Julius, and in the latter's son and daughter-in-law, Emanuel and Kathleen Torr. Lord Julius began life as a rakish attache, but underwent a com- plete moral regeneration by his marriage with an enormously wealthy and magnanimous Dutch Jewess, and has chiefly devoted his energies, in conjunction with his son Emanuel, to the introduction of an idealised feudal system on his estates. He is at the same time sole mortgagee of the encumbered estates of his brother the Duke, now in his dotage, pensions his ill-conditioned grand-nephews, whom he regards with con- temptuous tolerance, and, as the widow of one of the latter not unfairly puts it, "uses his control to bully the elder line into the paths of sweetness and light." One cannot quite get rid of the feeling that Lord Julius, if he had not satisfied himself by private inquiries as to the likelihood of Christian's proving an apt disciple of his "System," would never have extricated him from obscurity, sprung him on his cousins, and, so to speak, put him in training for the dukedom. Still, as specimens of masterful yet benevolent egotists, Lord Julius and his eon are interesting figures. Christian forfeits our sympathy by his extreme sensitiveness. He is more like an 2Eolian harp than a man. Indeed, if Gloria Mundi had appeared anonymously, reviewers would have sworn that it was written by a woman. The women are, on the whole, more interesting than the men—who are either oppressively well or ill conditioned—and Mrs. Edward Torr, the ex-dancer, her sister the typewriting girl, Mrs. Emanuel Torr, and Lady Cressage, the forlorn young widow, form an excellently contrasted quartet.
The root idea of Mr. Hind's romance, The Enchanted Stone, is that of a peaceful invasion of the West by the East in order to be present at the "ultimate Revelation," in which a mysterious enchanted atone, of supernatural origin and endowed, amongst other properties, with that of locomotion, is destined to play a conspicuous part. The stone falls into the possession of a young journalist of incorrigible levity, whose adroit but irresponsible stage-management at the critical moment when the assembled Orientals are expecting a miraculous sign, gives an enormous impetus to the cult, and induces a sympathetic millionaieess to build regardless of expense a magnificent Temple of the San in Cornwall. That is, from the point of view of the epicure in recondite sensations, quite the beat thing in the book. For of course the Cornish Nonconformists are goaded to frenzy by this aggressive tribute to heathenism, and their indignation culminates in violent and bloodthirsty icono- clasm. Mr. Hind is not unsuccessful in portraying the dignified fanaticism of his "brothers of the Sun," along- side of whom the "copy " - hunting narrator and his facetious friend Mayfair, journalistic reincarnations of Peeping Tom and Paul Pry, are but sorry figures. For we are expressly Bemired in the publishers' announcement that "the story, although exceedingly original and daring, is neither fantastic nor frivolous." Otherwise we should have been content to regard the performance merely as a spirited fantasia not always characterised by the best taste or by con- sistency of purpose. Thus one scene is a sort of parody of the finding of Moses as it would be represented at a Chicago Exhibition; while the occurrence of such a phrase as "the squirrel bobbed its mignon head" indicates Mr. Hind's limitations when he aspires to fine writing. But the real weakness of the book lies in its leaving the miraculous qualities of the stone unassailed and unexplained, while it exposes the imposture of the Revelation. Half-heartedness is a mistake in this department of romance. Mr. Hind would have done better had he emulated the logic and ruthless thoroughness of Mr. Wells in dealing with uncanny themes.
Readers who are wearied of the eternal duel of sex will find an entertainment after their heart in Four for a Fortune, an excellent story without a heroine. Gold-hunger takes the place of love, and gold-hunger of the most exciting sort, born of the discovery of an ancient and imperfect chart revealing the whereabouts of untold buried wealth. This chart is in the possession of a villainous and illiterate French sailor, and it is reserved for the ingenuity of two New Yorkers, who have casually met him at a French restaurant, to decipher the manuscript, identify the island, and organise the expedition vizi Halifax, and North Sydney, to St. Pierre Miquelon. The
treasure is dug up to the tune of some $4,000,000, safely con- veyed on board their schooner, and sail set for home, when all is ruined by the suspicion and greed of Carquemort, who, to monopolise the plunder, turns murderously on his companions. Finally, when they have overpowered him and his confederate, a Finnish seaman, the schooner is cut in two in a fog by a liner, and the fatal treasure irrevocably lost. The tale is well told, notably that portion which relates to the adventures of the strangely ill-assorted quartet in Nova Scotia. But the most interesting thing about it is the em- phatic assertion made in the preface and in the last chapter that the narrative is not merely founded on fact, but that, apart from the change or disguise of the names, "everything told of, and more too, actually happened." That being the case, we are not surprised at the animosity with which the author alludes to the year 1894, in which the expedition took place. Where wealth is concerned, the maxim, " 'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all," evidently does not hold good.
Two Fortunes and Old Patch is an " up-to-date " sporting novel with hunting, driving, polo, shooting, Anglo-Indian society, frontier fighting, and lovemaking as its chief ingre- dients. The joint authors are happier in their treatment of sport than of sentiment. It is impossible to be deeply
interested in a heroine who addresses an impecunious suitor in these terms; "My dear old man, what you want is oof, not advice, good sound solid oof." Still, we greatly prefer the slangy Philistinism of the Lady Betty Wilson and her " pals " to the saponaceous suavity, the delirious morbidity, of D'Annanzio. The Child of Pleasure, a translation of It Picture, has for its hero an invertebrate amorist, and produces on the plain person an effect somewhat akin to that of a hot- house filled with gardenias. As Mr. Symons justly remarks in his rhapsodic introduction, to D'Annunzio, "as to the men of the Renaissance, moral qualities are variable things, to be judged solely by a3sthetic rules." D'Annunzio, in short, has endeavoured to revive and accentuate Marinism. He is, if we may say so, the Ultra-Marinist of the modern decadence. Hollinhurst recounts the fortunes of the orphan daughter of a poor rector who secretly married the heir to an earldom. By the end of the book Gertrude is not only a Countess, but her daught,r is married to the Marquess of Ventnor ; her son, Lord Goodwood, is bringing home his child-wife ; and aristocrats are very thick on the ground. But then Gertrude never forgot, or allowed any one else to forget, that she was the grand-daughter of an Earl. The Altar of Life is a clever and forcible Anglo-Indian story of one woman's jealousy and vengeance—with spretx injuria form x as her motive—met, and in a measure overcome, by the splendid trustfulness of her innocent rival. The story has points of contact with two famous society scandals of the last decade, but it is not a roman a clef. Lydia Burton, the gipsy heroine of A Hard Master, is a well-conceived character. The slow steps by which, after much mutual misunderstanding, she is brought to recognise the devotion of her lover are skilfully indicated, and her final return to civilisation from the caravans is picturesquely stage-managed. But in real life the nomad strain would have proved unconquerable. Fitch and his Fortunes is another Anglo-Indian novel, with a jewel robbery as its motive and an enterprising young barrister as its hero. Fitch's long and deadly contest with Tuljagir the Tarml, and his romantic courtship of the Ranee, with its tragic sequel, furnish an excellent and unconventional entertainment. Mr. Riccardo Stephena's romance is as fantastic as its title. The Prince and the Undertaker reminds one not a little of Stevenson's New Arabian Nights alike in its plan and style. It may be recommended as an agreeable and harmless literary substitute for a nightmare. Mr. Hooper's new story, The Minister's Conversion, though its theme is more ambitious and painful, has all the charm of manner which marked his first novel. The relations of the heroine's three lovers—the gipsy, the prig, and the Puritan—are admirably drawn; and though the climax of the story—in which the minister denounces his own wife from the pulpit—verges on melodrama, amends are made in the touching scene of their final reconciliation.
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