ALICE LORRAINE.* MR. BLICKMORE'S hand has not lost its cunning.
Since we called upon an indifferent public to recognise the merits of Lorna Doone, we know no story which has given us quite the same amount of pleasure as the one before us. We use the word pleasure advisedly, for many have been full of deeper in- terest, and the work of larger genius, have dealt with more absorb- ing questions, or been written with more subtle skill. But in the line which be has chosen, or which Nature has chosen for him, Mr. Blackmore stands alone. Slowly, very slowly, Lorna Doone grew into favour. Not until people perceived that it must needs be read as leisurely as it was written did its full worth dawn upon them. The ordinary reader of the three-volume novel, eager only in hot haste to discover a plot and its ending, found nothing to meet his taste ; while the over-cultivated, but under nurtured brain, turned wearily away from writing that was neither subtle, cynical, nor epigrammatic. A healthy reaction has, however, we are glad to perceive, begun, and some people of ordinary sense are beginning to perceive that it is not specially conducive to a strong mental digestion to feed for ever on literary Liebig. In Mr. Blackmore's books there is a strong flavour of vegetable.
• Alice Lorraine; a Tale of The South Downs. By B. D. Blackmore. London : Sampson Low and Co.
Reading one of his stories has very much the effect of sitting in a field of new-mown hay, or catching the first scent of early strawberries.
In the present instance, the story itself is nothing until the third volume ; there is not a page at which it would be unpleasant to the reader to be interrupted, though it would be equally true to say that to one who enters into the spirit of the book, there will be scarcely a page which does not afford him pleasure. In the first place, we have what we take to be essential to all healthy life, in books or out of them,—a never wholly absent sense of humour..
The reader laughs, as he laughs in daily life, not because there is anything so very much to laugh at,—the joke won't even bear repeating to his half-irritated companion, who.
wonders what in the world he is laughing at; he is only, after all, sharing the author's intense perception of the comic, as when (and we are spoiling the story by telling it) the enraged rector, proud of his skill as a fisherman, and conscious of what is expected of him, signally fails one day, and "after fishing for about ten hours and catching a new-born minnow," comes to a halt, and re- pents that he has exhausted his whole stock of strong language. Nothing can be tamer in the telling, but in its proper setting the catching of that new-born minnow is delicious. Mr.
Blackmore understands nature as one who loves and holds constant communion with her can alone understand, and the relation is not that of disciple, but of lover. In, for- instance, the scene in the Grower's homestead, where Master Hilary Lorraine and Mabel Lovejoy are gathering fruit together,
the human element counts for something of course, but it is the scene itself, the graceful movements of the maiden as she chooses "the northern side of the tree, and the boughs where the hot sun
had not beaten through the leaves and warmed the fruit ;" in the little fact that she must not touch the fruit with her hand, and dim the gloss, "but above all things be careful—as of the goose- with the golden eggs—to make no havoc of young buds forming, at the base of every cluster, for the promise of next year's crop.' It is in the picture of the laughing girls, as they come back bearing their juicy treasure, "and the breeze that comes in the after- noon of every hot day (unless the sky is hushing up for a thunder- storm) begins to show the under-side of leaves and the upper gloss of grass," that we get into our minds a scene of quiet, leisurely content, which refreshes like a sudden silence in the midst of the whirr of the city. And in contrast to all the feverish
life, the unhealthy strain, the ball-room atmosphere, of too much young city life, in novels and out of them, we give this one sketch—
there are fifty such almost irresistibly tempting in the book—but we will put strong restraint upon ourselves, and give this one only :—
" On the other hand, the rarest work and the most tantalising tricke were going on, at a proper distance, between young Mabel and Hilary. They had straggled off into the strawberry-beds, where nobody could see them ; and there they seemed likely to spend some hours if nobody should come after them. The plants were of the true Carolina, other- wise called the old scarlet pine,' which among all our countless new sorts finds no superior, perhaps no equal; although it is now quite out of vogue, because it fruits so shyly. What says our chief authority?' ' Fruit medium-sized, ovate, even, and regular, and with a glossy neck, skin deep red, flesh pale red, very firm and solid, with a fine sprightly and very rich pine flavour.' What lovelier fruit could a youth desire to place between little pearly teeth, reserving the right to have a bite, if any of the very firm flesh should be left ? What fruit more sugges- tive of elegant compliments could a maid open her lips to receive, with. a dimple in each mantled cheek—lips more bright than the skin of the- fruit, cheeks by no means of a pale red now, although very firm and" solid—and as for the sprightly flavour of the whole, it may be imagined, if you please, but is not to be ascertained as yet? 'Now, I must pick a few for you, Mr. Lorraine. You are really giving me all you find. And they are so scarce—no, thank you ; I can get up very nicely by myself. And there can't be any brier in my hair. You really do- ilagine things. Where on earth could it have come from ? Well, if you are sure, of course you may remove it. Now I verily believe yon put it there. Well, perhaps I am wronging you. It was an unfair thing to say, I confess. Now wait a moment, while I run to get a little cabbage-leaf ! A cabbage-leaf ! Now you are too bad. I won't taste so much as the tip of a strawberry out of anything but one. How did you eat your strawberries, pray ? '—' With my mouth, of course. But explain your meaning. You won't eat what I pick for you out of what? '"
To our mind there is something perfect in that little explanation,— "the plants were of the true Carolina, otherwise called the old scarlet pine,' &c,"—the true Carolina, which should go on shed- ding its white blossoms and giving its fruit, medium-sized, ovate, even, and regular,' when Hilary and Mabel were gathered to their graves, old mother Earth none the less kindly, though a few human beings ceased to regard her with admiring eyes_ Wehave pledged our word not to make another extract, but Monday with the fruit-growers lies temptingly open before us,. making us half relent. Those amongst us who can escape from hot and dusty London, out and away to the green lanes of Kent,. or the pleasant homesteads of Somersetshire, may dispense with descriptions of the same, but where fate has been less kindly, we commend these pages to the tired eyes and overtaxed strength of the weary City worker ; they may help him to understand more fully that man does not live by bread alone, and possibly to resolve that some things seemingly necessary may be done without, but that a glimpse of a purer atmosphere, a more restful life, he will have, and in the long-run he will not be the loser by that resolution. And even if he cannot, by reason of insuperable im- pediments, realise the dream of restful beauty these pages will conjure up, the dream itself is healthful. "Five and forty years," said a poor old London tailor to our greatest artist, who was showing him a picture of wild flowers in a wood, " five-and-forty years I've worked, and I haven't seen those things growing since I was a little 'un, but I cares to see 'em still." He was the better for the picture.
If there be one element in life we need more than another at the present moment it is leisureliness, not leisure to be idle, but leisure truly to live to enjoy, and quietly exist. Doubt- less a shepherd's life seems very tame and blank to a City clerk, yet David learned a little somehow while tending his father's sheep which the world has not been altogether willing to forget,—learnt unconsciously, as all true lovers of nature learn, without any metaphysical speculations about the compara- tive value of their own thoughts or the results of them. " They never regarded themselves as mutton," says Mr. Blackburn, look- ing at his Lowland sheep, "sidling up against one another in the joy of woolliness." There is a beautiful suggestiveness in the remark, but it is time we touched the story contained in these pages, which has an interest, though not apart from the cherry orchards, the rich fields, and wandering brooks. We have amongst the earlier incidents of the book a Sunday spent with a Kentish Grower, not a day " dull as a Sunday in a warehouse," but a day when all the chairs are taken out of doors and the elder folk sit on them, finding mother earth too rheumatic, "especially in hot weather, when deep, sluggish fibres radiate ;" and the young folks spread them- selves on the grass, and the Grower smokes, and with a sense of deep content and a half-fear he may be taking it too easy for the sabbath day, observes, " God Almighty really hath made beautiful things for us His creatures to rejoice in—Mabel, put them two bottles in the brook—not there, you stupid child. Can't you see that the sun comes under that old root !" For many pages the story is simple, a mere idyll, till Hilary, the son of a proud old baronet, quarrels with his father about Mabel, and there is the old story, trouble leading ever to a wider life, and the old home is left without sunshine or laughter for a time, while Hilary is away at the wars, fighting and mismanaging much, but winning a name all the same under the Iron Duke. And here we must observe, if we have a quarrel with Mr. Blackinore, it is with the per- sistency with which he maintains the superiority of the "good old times." We may have lost some things in the path of progress, but surely the most cursory recurrence to the facts with which the page of history was filled in the times of which he writes might be sufficient to convince the most obstinate of Conserva- tives that as a nation we have made long strides towards a higher, purer, and more humane life. We could pursue the subject, but it is scarcely worth while ; the facts of the story refute the theory. The veriest pessimist is compelled to admit the existence of some " Mabels" amongst us still, county-bred maidens, than whom the world has nothing healthier, purer, or lighter-hearted to show ; whilst the "Remnant Chapmans," if not extinct, have at least, in homage to a better age, put on another livery. And even " Par- son Hales " has, we maintain, changed for the better, though we may not object to recognise some of his features still. Men as chivalrous, and as kindly, and with as true a ring when the right metal is needed, are surely not so far to seek, though they be not called together by the huntsman's horn. Nevertheless, Parson Hales is admirably sketched, especially when, under a stern sense of duty, he leaves his Sunday dinner to the chance of spoiling. It never occurs to him to shirk the duty, though he may indulge in strong language, as he says to himself, " Just my luck ; the two things I hate most are a row and the ruin of a good dinner," and then bethinks him of the asparagus ! " I do hope they'll have the sense not to put it on ; I can't very well tell Jem about it, it will look so Mollyish. Can I send a note in ? Yes, I can. The fellow can't read, that is one comfort." No sooner said than done ; he tore out the fly-leaf of his sermon, and under his text inculcating Christian vigilance wrote in pencil, " Whatever you do, don't put on the asparagus." The parson's family are equally well indicated. The relation between himself and his nephew Hilary, and all that came of it, is also touched with a masterly hand; and it is perhaps one great charm in Mr. Blackmore's stories, that his silence is always so much greater than his speech ; he is content, after the manner of men who are much alone with Nature, to suggest without exhausting his subject. This is strikingly the case with his principal heroine, Alice Lorraine herself ; instead of the usual amount of pages devoted to description, we have a brief sentence recording that she had an individuality of her own very distinct from that of Mabel Lovejoy,—" her nature was cast in a different mould. She had not only the depth—which is the common property of women—but she had also the height of loving." And in another sentence we learn she had (notwith- standing, we might say a good deal of contradictory evidence), a very strong sense of the rank and dignity of the Lorraines ; and disliked even more than her father did, the importation of this " vegetable product," as she rather facetiously called poor Mabel, into their castle of lineage. For the rest, Alice speaks and acts for herself, and we are allowed to draw our own conclusions with- out bias from the author. We know her best as we see her, during a moment of heavy personal trouble, amongst her birds, as she observes after feeding them,—" It is useless to put all your heads on one side and pretend you are just beginning. I know all your tricks quite well by this time. No, not even you, you Methusalem of a Bob, can have any more,—or at least, not much. This old Robin was her pet of all, through whose powers of inter- pretation the rest had become so intimate." But after all, as it mostly is in the true stories of life, if women are pulling the wires,. it is men who are appearing on the scenes, and it certainly is so- here ; and from Bottler the pigman to Sir Roland himself, we could ill spare one of them. Perhaps the finest scene in the book is the one between Sir Roland and the Grower, as the latter comes to offer Mabel's fortune to rescue Hilary from a great trouble into which he has fallen; but it is not our intention even to touch further the story itself,—even Jack (Jack was a donkey) must for the pre- sent remain unnoticed. Those who can appreciate Mr. Black- more's writing enjoy it, and will certainly secure this his last, we are half-inclined (in spite of our old weakness for" Lorna Doone) to think, his best work, as a pleasant addition to their holiday library..
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