MARCH HARES: A TALE FOR THE ERRATIC.* NOTHING has been
more peculiar of late than the many-sided -development of the style of book still impartially known as the novel. Since the sudden and startling success of Called Back, not so very many years ago, first shook the throne of the old three-volumed work—with its inevitable -first and third parts to begin and end with, and number two in the middle to furnish forth the requisite padding, with the studied aid of "meadows of margin" and little short sentences in the proper place—the single-volumed story has 'been assuming more and more of prominence. It is a 'curious thing, however, that whether through some real national peculiarity, or from a kind of evolutionary habit of mind born of many three-volumed years, the English have not yet succeeded in producing a single master in the new short form,—unless we except Stevenson, who, as we have more than once taken occasion to point out, was in reality far more of an essayist than a romancer, though had he lived longer his development in the latter shape might have been much fuller. There are plenty of sensational stories, as the phrase now goes, of good average merit in their kind, which the one-volume fashion has brought favourably forward. But on the quieter aides of life and character we find no promise of a Thackeray or a Dickens, some of whose short stories were masterpieces of their sort among the numberless aspirants to the crown. Complete pieces of artistic work in a small compass, like those of De Bernard or Gautier, or of the length so popular with the French reading public, do not seem to suit English authorship. Perhaps years of study of the orthodox three volumes have led us to think that length of words has some bearing on length of life, and have induced ambitions authors to set too little store by their efforts in more limited fields. The Ameri- zans, for some reason, have proved themselves in this matter to be more akin to the French than to ourselves, and would probably, and rightly, be pleased to feel that it is so. To take the name most popular and most widely known amongst us, we cannot call to mind any one of our own writers the least capable of ranking with Bret Harte in mastery over the short story. And of Howells—Irving and Hawthorne in sarlier days—Mary Wilkins, and various others, it can equally be said that they can claim a higher place in letters than any 3f our own cotemporary workers. Yet it is in the shortest compass, very often, that the greatest triumphs are achieved. Many of George Eliot's admirers will be found to question if, in true finish of art, she ever surpassed Silas Marner.
Mr. George Forth, the author of March Hares, is, we take • March Hares. By George Forth. London : John Lane. it, an indubitable American. Both the title of his book and his own nom de plume suggest something in the nature of a
practical joke ; and it is, we presume, in that sense that his quaint and attractively printed volume is to be read of men. "March Hares" is apparently a general name for all the characters in the book. Of these there are but five ; two pairs of lovers and a" heavy " father, who carry out the whole action of the plot in such an amazingly unconventional and eccentric fashion as to make us easily inclined to believe that they all suffer more or less from an attack of bee in the bonnet.
But it cannot be denied that their adventures become in consequence so new as to be amusingly readable. The hero and heroine meet by accident in the early morning upon Westminster Bridge, and on the strength of a previous nodding acquaintance in the reading-room of the British Museum, both of them being practically without friends in London, they make friends upon the bridge, and are gradually drawn on to spend the whole day together, when it transpires that the gentleman, on this his thirtieth birthday, disgusted with a life of useless dissipation, has half-concluded to put an end to the whole thing. The lady, on her side, a pretty little body with the Titian hair, after struggling with all her might to gain her living as a copyist or as a writer, and finally by helping an American woman at the Museum in "getting up pedigrees," has at last lost all employment, and has just been turned out by her landlady at 6 o'clock in the morning, with all her few possessions seized except what she carries on her back. Such is Vestalia Peaussier, who has succeeded by this alias in lending attractiveness to the name of Skinner. Mr. David Mosscrop, who, on his aide, startles his young companion by describing himself as an "habitual criminal," is, in fact, under a peculiar will, a professor who draws a modest salary for lecturing three weeks in every year to such young men as will attend to him upon an abstruse and impossible subject, and idles away the rest of the year on the strength of his casual employment. The complete change in the lives of these two which their chance meeting brings about forms the subject of this romance of a day. Gradually David, at the cost of a seventh part of his whole year's salary, provides his attractive young protegde with clothing and food and lodging, and the two fall roundly in love with each other as fast as ever did any two in real life ; and that sometimes can be very fast indeed. And what is apparent in the high-comedy scenes which pass between the two is a decided lightness of touch, and an odd vein of rather provoking but at the same time attractive humour: There is something really touching, though in a book which from its very title aims at nothing beyond making itself eccentric, in the poor little waif's made - up romance about her own early life and " French " origin, which she tells off like a lesson to her half-attentive comrade, who does not believe a word of it, and does not care whether he does or not, accepting it as a natural kind of fairy-tale. When she frankly confesses her innocent deception, which happens very soon, he accepts the confession also in exactly the same spirit, and much as Lord Ronald listened to Lady Clare. "He laughed a laugh of merry scorn," and took his Vestalia as she stood, and very much as anybody would have taken her who had the lucky chance of doing so. The way in which the two agree to celebrate a common birthday, to wipe the slate clear of all that happened, or might have happened, before their first meeting, and bring their love-tale of two to a happy ending, is made the subject of the entirely out-of-the- way and rather enticing practical joke which Mr. George Forth plays so frankly upon us in March Hares.
The other elements of the book are provided by a pair of travelling Americans, father and daughter, who certainly do not suggest, if the writer be an American, that he has any special tenderness in dealing with his own. They are, like the hero and heroine, what we may describe as serious carica- tures. Mr. Laban Skinner, from Paris, Kentucky, introduces himself to the pair in the British Museum on the strength of some remarks on the sculptures which he overhears David making ; and at once tries to secure him as a cicerone for him- self and his daughter Adele (a dark beauty who occupies her mind in scrutinising Vestalia's yellow hair and concluding that it is a wig) "in their inspection of the various objects of interest for which Europe is justly famous, by some person of erudition and also of an exceptional style of delivery, whereby the experience would be of much greater practical value to my daughter." "Commensurate compensation" presents no difficulty to Mr. Skinner's mind, but the blunt proposal meets with scant favour from the equally blunt Englishman ; and the adventurous Americans would not have been heard much more of but that the name of "Skinner" attracts the wander- ing Vestalia's attention, and enables her to discover in the old gentleman a long-lost and wealthy uncle, and a warm- hearted cousin in the dark-eyed Adele, after true play- wright's precedent. With a heart brimful of love and gratitude for her protector of a day the girl disappears from his ken for a time, to reappear only under the American uncle's gis, provided with a fortune comfortable enough to make her and her David secure of a future for their purposes. Both the Americans are well-sketched out- lines, and the only failure of the book in its humorous purpose is to be found in the Scotch Laird of Drumpipes, who prefers to be known as Mr. Linkshaw. He begins by unwittingly provid- ing Vestalia with a night's lodging in his absence, and ends by furnishing Adele with the American heiress's ideal—a lord by way of a husband. It looks as if our author failed to see any funny side in Scotchmen, for the laird is dull, and has to be skipped for the rest of the quintette, or to be studied only so far as he helps to make the story. It is not much of a story, nor does it profess to be. But what says David Moss- crop himself, when Vestalia confesses to her sinful inven- tions ?—" Hans Christian Andersen told me many stories, but I worshipped him increasingly to the end. Dear lady, the stories are the only veritable things in life. The alleged realities of existence pass by us, or roll over us, and leave us colourless and empty. The genuine possessions of our souls —the things that shape and decorate and furnish our spiritual habitations—are the things that never happened."
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