THE STRUGGLE FOR FAME.*

MRS. RIDDELL'S books have always had one merit that perhaps even the most blasti novel-readers can scarcely appreciate as keenly as reviewers must; they do not all turn upon the same subject and run in the same groove as every other novel that has been published within the last twenty years. After perusing we dare not say how many hundreds of three-volume, or (far too seldom), one and two-volume works of fiction, all dedicated exclu- sively to what one of the characters in the Struggle for Pante rather profanely terms "the love-and-twaddle business," or what another speaker in the same book expresses more elegantly as "love and beauty and children, and dress and jewels, and parties and pleasure, and everything coming right at the end," the relief has been great at finding a novel in which the characters do not devote their whole energies to making love, or having it made to them ; in which men and women can be heartily in love, and yet go about their daily work like rational beings, and we may add, like real people. Still greater, perhaps, has been the boon Mrs. Riddell has conferred upon novel-readers by not obliging all her important characters to be "in society," and so delivering us from that dismal condition of fiction in which everybody drinks five-o'clock tea, dines at eight, plays lawn-tennis (or croquet, ten years ago), shops at Marshall and Snelgrove's, and goes out of town at the end of the season. Novelists, especially of the feminine gender, content themselves far too much with depicting this kind of life over and over again, weaving in a thin plot of love or crime, and then they call it representing human life at the present day, unable to perceive that they really only scratch the surface of this nineteenth. century life with their pens, and give about as deep a view of human nature as a looking-glass does. Probably the cause may be found in the fact that people .write when they should be reading or observing, and that every one is in too great a hurry to look beneath the surface, but Mrs. Riddell's kind of novel may be best described in the words that she herself applies to her heroine's successful work :— " She gathered all her parts together, wove into the narrative the trials, the sorrosis, the self-denials, the successes of trade—explained • The Straggle for Fame. By Mrs. J. U. Riddell. London: Richard Bantle, and Bon. processes of manufacture unknown utterly to the reading public— took the outside world due East in London, and asked it to walk into dreadful little manufactories, and listen to 'shop' talk, and talce an interest in the doings and sayings of men who had probably never been to a dinner-party in their lives, and knew nothing of Sir Bernard Burke, and were not acquainted with lords or baronets ; but who were yet some of them gentlemen, and some of them cads, following the nature of their kind.'

In the book now before us, our author has not given us much of the City life which she so excelled in depicting ; and we

regret it, for there is a great charm in studying a kind of existence so entirely unlike our own, and in learning how the great heart of London works its apparatus ; but she is always unconventional (which does not mean objectionable), and many of her sketches of character are delightful. Are Mr. Vassett's views, we wonder, still held by publishers in general, and are they—worse still !—likely to be true ? "No one knew better than he did that the works he published were not likely to live, but in their generation they were good, useful, amusing. That they were not likely to go down through the ages did not much trouble the gentleman who had assisted at their birth. He felt they would live long enough ; they had served their purpose, and could die when they pleased. He felt no such frantic desire for posthumous fame as rendered him unhappy because he could not compass it. If Shakespeare had come back to earth, Mr. Vassett would not have risked anything he considered very valuable, say, for instance, the lease of his house in Craven Street, for the honour of standing godfather even to a second Shylock. The world's applause he did not con- sider worth the loss of one night's sleep; further, he had a notion, not uncommon among those who prefer to seek their mental food among the past of literature, rather than browse on the light pro- ductions of the present, that no more great books would ever be written. Mr. Vassett was no optimist concerning the books of the future. Looking around, he saw what he considered almost a dead-level of mediocrity. Whether the few who straggled out of the mass and achieved distinction, who were run after by readers and run down by the critics, would be thought much of in succeeding generations, was a question he professed himself glad he had not to decide. He admitted they had many merits ; but when asked if they would stand the test of time, he returned the safe answer that he did not know." Mr. Vassett may be old-fashioned and wanting in enterprise, but he is always a courteous gentleman, and an agreeable contrast, therefore, to the newer type of publisher whom Mrs. Riddell depicts further on, as the head of the brilliantly successful firm of Felton and Laplash :— " Hullo !' cried the great publisher, as he beheld his St. Mary Ovary acquaintance, what wind has blown you here ? Your letter, answered Barney.—' I never wrote you any letter, though I should have written to you long ago, if I had known your address:—

Well, somebody, at any rate, sent a letter. Here it is.'

But this is to Mr. Kelly, the author of "Street Sketches." I

am Mr. God bless me ! why, I thought he was some great

Did you ? ' said Barney. He could not have prevented the blood rushing into his face at this unexpected slap, if he had died for Oh, I didn't mean any offence,' exclaimed Mr. Felton, quickly. What I meant was a tip-topper, regular out-and-outer,

aw-awing sort of fellow. You understand, don't you 2 The street you live in, though, I daresay may have given rise to the notion. You lodge there, I suppose ?' —` Yes, I'm only a lodger,' answered Barney 'Now, we'd better get to business,' sug- gested Mr. Felton ; what have you to offer us, Kelly ?'—Barney winced a little ; he had not been prepared for such an amount of familiarity, but nevertheless answered the question with tolerable composure.—' Nothing except what has appeared before ?' said Mr. Felton ; that's bad, Zack, eh P'—Zack replying to this interrogatory with a grant of acquiescence, Barney ventured to observe Mr. Vassett had never found that the fact of previous publication in a magazine interfered with the sale of a volume.—' Oh, Vassett!' exclaimed Mr. Felton, with lofty scorn, don't talk to us of Vassett ; what he does, or Sods, or save or thinks is no rule for us ;' at which utterance Mr.

',splash laughed a dog's laugh 'No, no !' went on Mr. Felton, encouraged by this sign of approval, almost imperceptible though it was, we don't want any Vassetts held up here for our example. We've shown that good gentleman a thin., or two already, and before we've done with him, we'll show him and others a thing or two more. But now to settle with you; how much do you want for the lot ? . . . . . Will that do Yes, that is something nearer the mark,' replied Barney.—' Very well, then, we will send you on the agree- rnent.'—' Thank yon.'—' And "rush" one book, at all events, as soon as possible.'—' Will not that be somewhat imprudent, con- sidering how recently a work of mine has been brought out ? Ex- ploded nonsense,' commented Mr. Felton, there are some authors I only wish I could get a book from every week in the year.'—' The

wisdom of the ages, then, seems foolishness to you ? I should think so, indeed. I am my own wisdom, and my own age, and my own everything ; and if you can show me any other man who could have done as much as I have done out of the same material I'll give you leave to call me what you like.' 'I only imagined I might venture to make a suggestion concerning the time of publica- tion of my own work.',-' Then you were mistaken,' retorted the genial publisher. No, Sir, I allow no interference here. I bring oat my books when I think I will, and I don't bring them out when I think I won't. If I once allowed that sort of thing,' he added, viciously, might soon give up command of the ship.'"

Even Mr. Felton shines in contrast with his partner, who, when he becomes head of the firm, and is publishing Mrs. Lacere's successful novels, sits with his hat on to receive her, greets her by asking her if her husband has got any work yet, and goes on, "I can't speak to you to-day. Look in to-morrow ;" or, "You're a nice sort of young woman. Where's the rest of that manuscript ? " or, "I had your note, but it's no use asking me for any money, we ain't got none here ;" or, "That last reprint of yours was a bad business for me ; I wish it had been at the — before I ever was such a fool as to take it ; " and all the time, while he was insulting her position, and de- preciating her work, and grinding her down to the last penny, he was, as she found out afterwards, making a good income from her books, and finding her, as Mr. Butterby truly said,

"the best steed in his stable." It is a satisfaction to know that this " great " publishing firm failed at last, and we may hope

that nothing like it has ever arisen since ; but it is a pity that we cannot quote any brighter pictures of human nature to set against these dark ones,—not that there are none such through

The Struggle for Fame, but they must be read, not quoted. The charming Bohemianism, for instance, of the eminently life-like

Dawton menage,—though, by the way, Will Dawton must have known London better than to think that an Atlas omnibus would take him to Paddington !—is sprinkled through nearly the whole of one volume, and so is the pathetic heroism of Mr. Lacere's married life. We could hardly expect a book from Mrs. Riddell in which the principal married couple did not somehow, with the best intentions, fail to make each other happy ; why they fail in this story it is not quite easy to see, unless we accept the disparity of age and the unpleasant relations as sufficient cause ; but even then it is difficult to believe that a woman like Glenarva Westley could have lived so long with her husband, and remained blind to all his real greatness. She does at length perceive that "everything in her books the world thought great and true and useful, was due to the husband who had never been able to make his mark. Without him she could have done nothing—nothing- and in return she had not half loved him as she ought;" not, perhaps, an isolated experience ; but, of course, in her case it comes almost too late. Mrs. Riddell certainly does not favour the "married and lived happy ever after" style of human life ; her married people are generally melancholy during the greater part of their lives,-and only achieve happiness through much

suffering or sin, or both ; indeed even while they are enjoy- ing brief intervals of sunshine, she has a way, which we consider rather tiresome, of stopping the story to inform us that if they had known all that was going to come upon them before long, they would never have felt as cheerful and happy as they did then,—a sort of "if you know'd who was near, I rather think you'd change yoar note, as the hawk remarked to himself with a cheerful laugh, when he heard the robin red-breast

singing round the corner." But her characters are always human, there is much humour as well as pathos in her books, and considering that every one who has not published something is apparently dying to do so, this straightforward, unvarnished

history of what The Struggle for Fame really means ; who those are who succeed, and those who fail, ought to be read with

keen interest by a very large and varied number of educated. people.