MR. GRANT ALLEN'S NEW NOVEL,
THERE are few writers of the time who can come near Mr. Grant
Allen in talent, versatility, and industry. His versatility and industry are, indeed, such that even one of M. Gaboriau's detectives would have some difficulty in discovering his identity under the various literary aliases,—" Cecil Power," "J. Arbuthnot Wilson," and, for aught we know to the contrary, a score of others—which it amuses or benefits him to adopt. Whether he is a man of genius, or merely a very clever man who, to nine observers in ten, seems to be a man of genius ; whether he is a scientist with a quick eye to specialties or oddities in humanity, or a man of the world with an amateur's love of science and speculation, it would be rash to say. But Mr. Grant Allen will simplify the work of his critics, though not quite in the way that the more favourable of them would wish, if he earns, as he is obviously in danger of doing, a reputation for over-production. Meanwhile, we are inclined to say of his novel, bearing the rather misleading title of Babylon, that while it is very bright, very amusing, and by no means unambitious, it is rather a fresh success scored by its author's talent, versatility, and "go," than a trustworthy evidence of genius. That it stands far above the average of contemporary fiction goes without saying. Mr. Grant Allen never writes otherwise than smartly ; and even were he to treat men and women from the standpoint of the naturalist rather than of the artist or of the moralist, he could not fail to produce three readable volumes about them. Happily, too, there is no realism, in the French and odious sense, in Babylon,—a fact which it would be unnecessary to mention were it not that the title seems to suggest something of the sort. Mr. Allen's Dorsetshire and New England heroes and heroines err, if at all, in having, like Mr. Black's, not too much passion, but too little. But the virgines puerique, who constitute three-fourths of the con- stituencies of the circulating libraries, will probably adore them.
We have said that Babylon is not unambitious ; possibly we should have been more thoroughly satisfied with it had its plot not been a trifle too ambitious. Mr. Allen tries to have a foot in each hemisphere, as the titles of his two first chapters- " Rural America" and "Rural England "—of themselves suffi- ciently show. It is hardly possible to repress the suspicion that he is aiming at proving to the Anglo-American reading public that he can reproduce English rustic dialect as well as Mr. Hardy, and hit-off the salient points of American character as well as Mr. Julian Hawthorne, when—which is far too seldom, however —that author is at his best. This ambition, indeed, enables Mr. Allen to make a most effective start in Babylon. The first chap- ter presents the humble boyhood, in Geauga County, of Hiram Winthrop, the great American landscape painter ; the second, the equally humble boyhood in Dorsetshire of Cohn Churchill, the great English sculptor. The connecting-link between them is Sam Churchill, the adventurous brother of Colin, who goes to America, and—this, by the way, is not quite clearly explained— gets into the employment of Deacon Winthrop, Hiram's father, and who ultimately brings the two geniuses together in Rome, and furthers the fortunes of both in a most substantial fashion. The picture of an American Arcadia, rendered gloomy by a pinched Puritanism, is well managed, even if we are inclined to think that Deacon Winthrop is rather overdrawn. Mr. Allen's Dorsetshire idyll, too, with its " character-talk," is undoubtedly a good imitation of the reality—if we cannot go further in its praise. Hiram gets a chance of drawing the American eagle in his own untutored style
"'He's the American eagle, I guess,' the lad said to himself, as be looked from bird to paper with rapid glances, 'only he ain't so stiff built as the one upon the dollars, neither. His head goes so. Ain't it elegant ? Oh, my ! not a bit, rather. And his tail ! That's how. The feathers run the same as if it was shingles on the roof of a residence. I've got his tail just as true as Genesis, you bet. I can go the head and the tail, straight an' square, but what licks me is the wings. Seems as if you couldn't get his wing to show right, nohow, agin the body.'"
Hiram's rather intolerable, as well as intolerant, father comes upon him, discovers what he has been about while he ought to have been weeding peppermint, cuffs him, and tears his sketch- book to pieces. Thereupon poor Hiram soliloquises :—
"Taint the lickin' I mind, it's the picture. Them thar picture was pretty near the on'y thing I liked best of anything livin'. Wal, it wouldn't hey mattered much ef he'd on'y tore up the ones I'd drawed; but when he tore up all my paper, so as I can't draw any
• Babylon. By Grant Allen. 3 vols. London Chatto and Windus. 1885. more, that does make a feller feel reel bad. I never was so mad with him in my life afore. I reckon fathers is the onaccountablest and most miraelous creators in all creation. He might hey tore up the picture ef he liked, but what for did he want to go tearin' up all my paper ?"
On the other hand, and on the other side of the Atlantic, take the conversation between the fathers of Mr. Allen's English hero and heroine, Geargey Wroe and Sammy Churchill, on the ruin of Wootton Mandeville, in Dorsetshire
" 'It's the dree terms as 'as ruined 'Ooton,' Geargey said philo- sophically—the research of the cause being the true note of philosophy. It's they dree terms as -'as done it vor sartin.'—' Why, 'ow's that, Gearge ?'—' Well, don't 'ee see, Sam, it's like o' thik. W'en they used to 'ave 'arf-years at the schools, bless 'ee, yolks with families 'ad used to bring down the children from school so soon as the 'arf-year were over. Then the glut people ud take the young gentlemen out fishin', might be in June, or July may be, and gee a bit o' work to honest fisher-people in the offisayson. Then in August, London people nd come and take login's and gee us a bit more work nice and tidy. So the sayson 'ad used to last off an' on from June to October. Well, bime-by, they meddlesome school-people, they goes an' makes up these 'ere new-fangled things o' dree terms, as they calls 'em, cuttin' up the year unnat'ral like into dree pieces, as 'adn't used to be w'en we was children. Wot's the consequence ? Every- body a-rushin' and a-crushin' permixuons in August, the 'ole boilin' 'ern together, wantin' rooms an' boats, an' fishermen, so as the parish baint up to it. Us 'as to work 'ard for six or seven week, and not give satisfaction nayther ; and then rest o' the year 'as to get along the best os can on the short sayson. I can't abase they new-fangled ways, npsettin' all the constitooted order of things altogither, an' settin' poor fishermen at sixes and sevens for arf their life.time.'— 'It's the march of intellect, Geargey,' Sam Churchill answered deprecatingly. (Sam understood himself to be a Liberal in politics, and used this convenient phrase as a general solvent for an immense number of social difficulties.) 'It's the march of intellect, no doubt, Geargey ; there's a sight o' progress about ; board.schools an' Bich like ; an' if it cuts agin no, don't 'ee see, w'y us 'as got to make the best of it, hawever.' "
But the exigencies of Mr. Allen's plot do not permit him to do full justice to his local colouring either in Geauga County or in Dorsetshire. Both his American and his English roads have to lead literally to Rome,—Colin Churchill to be finished in his art as a sculptor ; Hiram Winthrop to learn from the most competent of critics that he had better return to America as soon as possible, and there perfect his great powers as a painter of its landscapes. Both must, therefore, make very rapid progress, and even have some peculiar experiences, before they can meet on a common ground. For a time, consequently, Mr. Allen gives up character-sketching for the nearest approach to adventure of which, perhaps, he is capable. Hiram Winthrop falls in with Am:knit', a generous Bostonian, who acts as his good genius ; while Colin, having learned to speak Italian from his first master in art, makes his way to Rome as a valet to a Sir Henry Wilberforce, a baronet, who needs a servant that can speak the language, which he is too indolent so much as to attempt to acquire himself. This would seem a sufficiently complicated plot ; but an additional entanglement is caused by the rather conflicting love-affairs of the artists. While- Hiram is engaged in his 'prentice work in America, he "meets his fate" in Gwen Howard-Russell, the daughter of an aristo- cratic, empty-headed, and indeed rather snobbish Indian colonel. Gwen, of course, tarns up in Rome ; but there, instead of falling in love—at all events in the first instance—with Win- throp, becomes enamoured of Churchill ; while, still further to increase her troubles, Audouin becomes enamoured of her. The party at Rome is completed by the arrival of Minna Wroe, Colin's old playmate in Wootton, and to whom he is loyally attached. She also goes through a course of self-education ; and from being a domestic servant, becomes in the first instance a pupil-teacher, and in the second a governess. Gwen discovers Minna's secret, which is devotion to Colin, and accepts Hiram as a husband. To complete the latter's good fortune one thing only is required, and that is success as an artist. Happily, though in too improbable a fashion, John Truman, the great art-critic of his time, and whom it would be perfectly easy to identify even were he not virtually named by being described as the author of "The Domes of Florence," finds his way into the studio of Winthrop. He condemns wholesale the " classical" pictures, the Baeohuses and the like, on which the young American has been engaged since he came to Rome ; but sounds the praises of his purely American work to such purpose in the public ear, that the studio of the unknown and unappre- ciated man is thronged with purchasers. Churchill's position had been assured before, through his having been taken up by a great Roman sculptor, who discerns in him an undeveloped genius, and treats him as a brother and an equal. No reason now exists why Hiram and Colin should not both get married and be happy.
Here we have undoubtedly an original story ; but the plot strikes us as the essentially mechanical one of a very clever man, who is capable, not of throwing himself into, but of detaching himself from, the lives of his characters, and who, perhaps un- consciously, treats them as marionettes. It is probably on this account that none of these characters can be considered as per- fectly satisfactory, except Churchill and Winthrop, who are at the first, and continue to the last, children of art rather than of nature. Thus, Mr. Allen's two heroines—for we cannot regard in the light of a heroine the passionate Italian model, Cecca, of whom Minna becomes jealous, and by whom she is almost poisoned— are both deficient in the eminently feminine quality of pride. We cannot conceive a high-spirited English gentlewoman like Gwen Russell permitting herself to slip into an engagement with Winthrop almost immediately after she finds that Churchill can never be her lover. Similarly. Minna, loveable little creature though she is, has not the pluck of an ordinary English girl, and indicates too strong a desire to construe Colin's eminently cousinly caresses as the symbols of what she terms betrothal. Andouin, too, breaks down sadly in the third volume. When he is first introduced on the scene, he reminds one of some of the robuster characters in Mr. Howells works; but when in the end he figures as the love-sick swain, that makes his will under melodramatic circumstances, and positively courts death by Roman fever, we get tired of him. There are good points in Deacon Winthrop, but he is repulsively bigoted and ignorant. John Truman is, of course, Mr. Ruskin ; but Mr. Ruskin, though Carlylean in spirit, is not slavishly Carlylean in style, as Truman is made out by Mr. Allen to be. Altogether, we repeat, that while Babylon is in itself a very enjoyable book, and very much superior to ordinary fiction, we are not disposed to say that it gives evidence of its author being able to write a novel of the orthodox length—as distinguished from a short story— otherwise than with the cleverness which he shows in every- thing he turns his hand to. We are bound to add that Mr. Macnab's illustrations of this work do not add to its attractive- ness; they can only be described as dowdy.
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