MR. WILLIANI JOHNSTON, M.P., NOVELIST.* NOTHING is pleasanter, on a
monotonous railway journey, as one's eye wanders listlessly over W. H. Smith and Son's bookstalls, than the sight of an old favourite in one of those gay covers that is a warrant of its cheapness and an assurance that it will be possible to slip it into one's own pocket for a very small outlay ; when we meet Anthony Trollope in this form,—by the way, why do Chapman and Hall keep us waiting so long for another of his novels, while they issue so much inferior stuff in their "select library of fiction "?—we forgive the execrable covers, and are even tempted to fold the invariable red lady or brown gentleman with the coarse features and the wooden expression in a close embrace. But our disappointment is proportionate when a book that we had hoped was long since forgotten rises from the tomb in these unseemly gay and gorgeous grave-clothes to run a second course of mischief, and inveigle the unsuspicious reader into a perfect wilder- ness of gapes and yawns, and dullness and vexation. The present writer believes, however, that he stands nearly alone in a fatal in- ability he possesses, apart from the exigencies of criticism, to lay down a book once begun till every word has been religiously per- used ; and so believing, he rejoices in the terrible dullness of the book before him, as affording a sure hindrance to the study of it by the healthy-minded, pleasure-seeking novel-reader. We could have forgiven Mr. Johnston for writing the book when he was a young, and not a public man ; when his opinions would not carry with them the weight of a thoughtful legislator, and when his religious sympathies and antipathies might be explained and excused as the natural expression of the warm partizanship of youth ; but, though no one can doubt our Protestantism and our hatred of all the cruelties that have been practised by Rome, and not by Rome only, in the name of expediency and religion, we do not feel disposed to forgive "William Johnston, M.P." for the capital of the prosperous and Protestant North of Ireland, the idol of the Orangemen, and the man of mature years, for reproducing, at such a time as this, a story the only effect of which, if it have any, must be to stir up animosity against the
* Fig/Whack. By William Johnston, M.P. London; Ward, Lock, and Tyler.
Catholics, and to delay the good-fellowship which England is at last striving so zealously and so sincerely to foster between the believers in the two faiths. Had the story been founded on fact, we should still have deprecated its republication at this time, and would remind Mr. Johnston that if the Romanists are chargeable with greater cruelty to individuals, Protestants have to answer, in Ireland at least, for longer-continued and more widespread political injustice. Doubtless Mr. Johnston could quote isolated facts in de- fence of much that he brings against the Catholics, though it is a little too much to make a Jesuit priest in the last quarter of a century literally steal two English heiresses and their property, and make one of them a nun without her knowledge and with the connivance of the Archbishop of Paris ; and it is unpardonable to introduce Dr. Pusey, under the name of Dr. Tractate of Oxford, and to represent him as practising and conniving at the most flagrant dishonesty. But we cannot too often protest against the system, so common in novels written to advocate special views or to expose special abuses, of treating the exception as if it were the rule, and delicately exaggerating this, for even honest men, unless on their guard, will unconsciously do so, while maintaining silence on all that tells against the opinions of the writer. An agrarian murder, the complicity of an Irish priest, the falseness of a Catholic jury, the absurdest of the Romish festivals, the horrors of the conventual system and the defects of its education, the prose- lytizing spirit of the Romish clergy, the highest flights of English high-churchism, and the forgery, perjury, and numerous murders and treacheries of a priest of the Jesuits, including the abduction and imprisonment of the aforesaid wealthy young English ladies, are all introduced to bear witness against that Popery to which, of course, the whole misery of Ireland is attributed. Mr. Johnston has chosen twins for his heroines, and the tale should have been writ- ten in Greek, for the dual number would have saved much trouble, except that the careers of the young ladies run parallel for a lamentably short time. He has chosen, however, twins—he speaks of them as "two twins," but his grammar is not to be relied on— not inappropriately, for two ideas alone are to be found in the story, and they are as closely allied as they can be to retain each an individuality of its own ; namely, worship of Protestantism and hatred of Popery. To place these ideas in every light, we have scene after scene introduced of most unmitigated prose and altogether irrelevant to the story ; the saints' festivals in Rome, the agrarian murder, a borough election and a visit to the Orange lodge in Ireland, a high-church service in London, and many other incidents are heavily constructed, one after another, as platforms from which Mr. Johnston may expound his views of Popery, while the poor twin sisters are left to struggle in the clutches of the Jesuitical arch-fiend, with "the whitest of all white faces and the blackest of all black hair," as we are thoughtfully reminded from time to time.
The story is on the pattern of the "Babes in the Wood," and is briefly this : twin sisters become orphans at fifteen and co- heiresses of a large property ; and strangely enough, after their last surviving parent's death, they are left alone for a month with no friends at all near them, though an affectionate aunt, unen- cumbered with children, resides in Scotland. A Jesuit priest who has witnessed the deaths of their grandmother, step-grandfather, and step-uncle De Vere, at Rome, naturally enough takes advantage of this culpable negligence on the part of the Scotch aunt and other friends, and personating the step-uncle, of whose death no one has been informed, asserts his guardianship and walks off with the young ladies ; failing in his hope of getting one of them drowned at Lodore, he consents to leave her in Scotland, and incarcerates the other in a nunnery in Paris. Letters between the sisters are intercepted by the pretended uncle, who substitutes forgeries of his own. By a happy accident, in a street in Oxford at night, some of the genuine epistles are blown to the feet of the hero, Annandale, who had perilled his life at Lodore in the service of the young ladies; these letters lead to suspicion of the pretended uncle and of the fate of the sister at Paris ; a law-suit is instituted, and after very irregular proceed- ings in court (witnesses for the plaintiff, for instance, arriving unexpectedly and volunteering and giving their evidence in the middle of the defendant's case), the perjuries and forgeries of the defendant are made manifest ; but as his apprehension would bring the tale to too abrupt a conclusion, no one takes any notice of the felon, who walks off scot-free, and immediately decoys away the second young lady, with a tale of her sister's dying state, before the Scotch uncle-in-law and real guardian has returned from the trial. Wreaking his vengeance for the loss of the property on this sister, the Jesuit Ricci imprisons her in a dark damp cell in a nunnery at Rome, and administers only bread and water, of which she partakes to the accompaniment of the most cruelly tantalizing tales of how near she has been to her lover and her sister, and how hopelessly she is cut off from them for ever ; here, during the excitement that followed the flight of the Pope, Annandale finds the victim and her tormentor together, and rescues the former, while a Roman patriot kills the latter ; meantime the other sister has been conveyed to a nunnery in London, to which her friends trace her, and into which her devoted tenants, led by Annandale, who shows considerable contempt for and independence of English law, break, and carry her triumph- antly to her old home ; here, broken by sorrow, she soon dies, while her sister rewards Annandale for his constancy.
It is not difficult to understand why a man with such decided views on the subject so all absorbing to Northern Ireland should have been selected to represent its capital in Parliament; but it is to be regretted exceedingly that so important a borough should not have helped on the reconciliation of Protestant and Catholic Ireland by strengthening the hands of the champions of a just, philosophical, and Christian impartiality. Sincerity and an earnest purpose, however, sanctify even fanaticism, and Mr. Johnston can claim these ; his fanaticism, too, is not so much a religious one, the most dangerous of all, as one roused in resist- ance to the civil and political power and influence of Rome ; it is, too, against the system that he charges all the evil, and not against individuals. Moreover, if the finer traits of character may be gathered at all from an author's works, we may venture to assert that Mr. Johnston's bark is much worse than his bite, and that there is evidence of a very kind and loving heart, that would not hurt even the blackest hair of the whitest-faced Jesuit's head, and that has managed, if not to extract the poison from the nightshade he has applied to the Romish system, at least to supply an antidote in the gentlest of personal relations. "Let your indignation fall upon the sin, and not the sinner," we are as sure as the perusal of a book can make us, is Mr. Johnston's rule of life,—notwithstanding the very hard knocks with which he belabours the fictitious tools of the Papacy. One rare passage of tenderness itself—rare for its beauty, but not for the indication of an affectionate heart, for there are many of these—we must quote here, in justification of our faith in Mr. Johnston's womanly tenderness of nature :—
"The trunk that is to be packed for the summer holidays, to be spent in the dear, delightful country, is packed just as quickly as it is possible to hurry the things in ; and if they be crushed and soiled a little, why, the trunk is going home, and Susan will unpack it. and the things will soon be done up again, and look bright and trim, after being handled by Susan's nimble fingers. But if the trunk belong to a poor girl going out, not very long after her father's funeral, to battle along the cold, lone road of life, far away from home and her mother, it is a sad and eerie thing, that packing of the little old trunk, with the big brass nails in the lid, that has, perhaps, travelled many a journey in other and happier days. It is a sad and eerie thing to put in the small articles, in the small trunk, one by one, as the poor mother stands by, weeping, and brings over every little thing that sho has finished and marked, with her own hand, for her daughter, as she sets out on the solitary by-path through the desert of life."
The twin element in Nightshade is curiously prevalent ; there are, as we have said, two ideas ; there are also two subjects care- fully alternating, and two styles suitable to these ; namely, the dull and heavy talks about Popery, where it is to be regretted that assertion occupies the place that (if we must have this sort of thing in novels) should have been held by sound argument, when it is to be had in such abundance ; and the rosebud and honey chapters, where a poetical element is distinctly visible, which breaks into pretty and feeling verse at page 274, spoiled, how- ever, by the smiling of a lark, which inevitably causes the smiling of the reader in a wrong place. These chapters we cannot pre- tend to admire in their poetical-prose state ; word pictures to be endurable in prose should be simple and truthful in the extreme. These are disfigured by alliteration, repetition, and fancifulness either run mad or declining into its dotage. Here are two passages illustrating the two styles. The hero, Mr. Annandale, is convers- ing with the agent for his Irish property, and asks :— "' What is your opinion, then, of Orangeism ? '—' That it is the only
honest political creed of the day.'—' How ? Because it is never changed, being based upon true Protestantism.'—' And is the Orange Institution one worthy of the support and encouragement of those who
deem themselves true Protestants ? Do you know its objects? To tell the truth, not clearly.'—'In the first place, it is an association of men bound together to support and defend the Sovereign and the Protes- tant succession.'—' Every loyal Englishman must approve of that.'— 'The Protestant religion must be professed by all its members, and ought to be maintained by them," &c., &c.
And here is the sugar-plum after the Orange bitters. The scene is between a young Protestant nobleman and the lady who after- wards becomes his wife ; and as her name is "May," the month of
May and a tree of May are appropriately chosen as the time and place for the momentous question,—(we may remark that it was an unusually early season even for Devonshire, for we are told that the petals of the hawthorn were blown by a breezy gust in showers over them, both "as Nature's offering at the shrine of beautiful May,")—
" And as the light touch was being withdrawn from his shoulder he could stand this no longer, but took in both his own the little band that was shyly stealing away, as if it had boon already too bold in seeking to rival that other May. And then ho said—' May !' And May did not answer him, but looked down at the fallen flowers. She did not seem angry though, nor did she take away her hand. And then he said- ' Dear May !' And still May did not answer him, though her little heart went tap, tap, tap, as if it would have answered him if it could only have got out, which it seemed almost determined on trying, it went tap, tap, tap, so loud. And then he said—'My own May !' " "And Lord Oxborough added—. What he added does not signify ; it was some- thing not very original and not very new, and therefore it would not be of the slightest use to say anything more about it. They went to the window, and looked out on the flowers, and listened to the merry song of the birds. And Lord Ozborough drew May Wilmington to his side, and pointed to a willow warbler that was singing in a favourite rose-tree belonging to his May. And she seemed to listen to the warbler's little song, as it came in to them through the open window, and she watched it after it had done singing, as it left her rose-tree and then came back again ; and she gave a very little sigh, why she did not know. Lord Oxborough heard it, and drew her closer to his side, and said, 'My own May!' And she looked fondly up at him, and then laid her head against his shoulder. She was thinking of the hawthorn tree, and of the bank of primroses, and of the warbler and its little twee—twee—twee- twi, and of the gentle sound of the bees, as they went hum—m—m—ming. Hawthorn and primroses, warbler and bees, were sights aud sounds of that merry month of May ; and flowers and birds and bees seemed all to tall the same story, and to rejoice in telling it ; and this story, that that they wove with flowers and song, was the flower-song story of love."
That is the sort of thing which we have been accustomed from our youth upwards to call ipecacuanha. But after so much bitter, it is perhaps not amiss to administer an emetic.
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