11 MAY 1867, Page 16

CAPTAIN JACK.*

Ma. MAITLAND has made the mistake of thinking that because the special information which he had acquired concerning the

• Captain Jack ; or, the Great Van Broek Property. A Story. By J. A. hitddand. 2 tole. London: Tirtsley Brothers.

titles to the old estates in the half settled parts of the State of New York, was admirable substratum for a novel if he had had the gift for writing one, that therefore it would be the best form into which he could throw his American experience. If he had given the most interesting part of his own American gleanings in the form in which he himself gleaned them, and in the same useful and concise style in which the chapters describing American manners in this book are written, he would have made a capital book of travels. But he has probably learned from Sir Walter Scott that no pictures of manners and history dwell so long on the memory as those which are used as scenery for an interesting tale, and so he has injudiciously used up his own excellent materials in paint- ing scenery for a tale which it is not interesting, which never excites an interest from beginning to end. Not that there is anything either impossible or in bad taste in the story before us, but that the author himself evidently feels no sort of in- terest in it as a story, that he recurs to it with effort after detailing scenes which he had obviously found great pleasure in recalling as part of his own experience, and that he imparts very successfully to his readers the extreme languor with which he himself regards the fictitious thread of his own book. The volumes are really worth reading for the fresh delineation they give of certain aspects of American life, and for the excellent judgment with which the extravagances and faulty taste of the most pecu- liar parts of that life are estimated. But the tale itself is naught. There is a homely dish, supposed by some worthy people to be rather good, called, we believe, apple charlotte, composed of bread and apple in such an ill congealed mixture that it eats like a

bread poultice anointed with apple,—the apple makes the bread taste sodden, and the bread makes the apple taste earthy. That is very like a tale written as this is, for the sake of the instructive information and observations it contains. The tale spoils the information by inspiring us with the expectation of interest or adventure, and the information spoils the tale by inspiring us with the wish for authentic fact and personal authority. Hence our judgment on Captain Jack, or the Great Van Brock Property, is that it is a clever and valuable journal of travel and observation, spoiled by the arduous construction of a tale in the production of which Mr. Maitland felt no touch even of creative excitement. Consequently he is always leaving his narrative, in order to intersperse it with his own observations and remarks, and his characters, evidently almost all taken from life, and often admirably described as real characters,

are introduced only to be left just where they were first found, without any development,—the author's own interest in them lying not in any imaginative pleasure in working them out as characters, but only in describing what he had himself come across in real life.

But if we read the book not as a tale, but as containing what an intelligent observer thought most worthy of note and remem- brance in his experience of the Northern States of America, the two volumes before us have considerable merit and value, their only fault being the false artistic form into which the writer has thrown them. The picture of the New Hampshire parsonage, for instance, and the difficulties of the voluntary system as it is practically worked out among the New England freeholders, is very lively and entertain- ing. What can be better than the following sketch of a "surprise donation party,"—in other words, a party got up by the con- gregation of a New England pastor as a surprise to him, each member of it bringing a contribution in kind, of provender, farm stock, or other produce, and expecting the unfortunate clergyman and his family to receive these very bulky contributions to his worldly goods with humorous gratitude? An English cousin of the pastor's daughter, who knows not the customs of the country, comes back from a long walk in the midst of this "surprise donation party," and is thus received by his cousin :—

" must go upstairs,' he said at length, 'and wash my. lands, and make a few alterations in my dress. A shooting jacket and gaiters are not exactly the habiliments in which to be presented to ladies at a party.'—' Nonsense ;' said Mary; 'nothing of the kind is necessary. a Those are some of your ftnikin English notions ; well enough in New York, or Boston, I dare say, but out of place among us plain country- folk. Besides,' she want on to say, laughingly, you can't do anything of the sort. There's a party of young ladies eating dough nuts and drinking currant wine up in your bedroom, and your ewer is full of greengages, and your basin is heaped with hickory-nuts, and you can't get to the sink in the kitchen because the men have gone into the kitchen and washhouse to smoke, and the kitchen sink is fall of winter turnips, and so is the boiler, and all the pails in the house are occupied; so en mance/ monsieur mon cousin, and let me lead you in and introduce you at once.' George was obliged to comply with as good a grace as possible. On entering the rear of the passage, however, he very nearly fell headlong over a sack of potatoes, and, endeavouring to catch himself from falling, he clutched at a table which he knew to stand on the opposite side of the dark passage, and struck his hand through the mist of a huge apple-pie. 0, you clumsy !' exclaimed cousin Mary. Is that the manner in which people are accustomed to enter a house in England? 0, you uncivilized being!'—' It's not generally the custom in England to lumber up the entries to a house with sacks of vegetables,' replied George, a trifle vexed, for his shirt cuff, as well as the cuff of his coat, was soaked with the sticky juice of the pie. am sorry, though,' he added, that I've spoilt aunt Ellen's pie.'—' 0, the pie's of no consequence,' said cousin Mary. 'There are seventeen of them in the house that I know of—perhaps more. It's your clumsiness that I'm thinking of ; and see what a 'muss' you've made of yourself Here, take my handkerchief and rub it off the best way you can, and throw the handkerchief under the table. The room was thronged with visitors, who were for the most part gathered round a long table, brought into the parlour for the occasion, which was loaded with eatables and drinkables of every conceivable variety, placed in juxtaposition without any regard to congruity. Those of the visitors who were fortunate enough to find places at the table were helping those who stood behind them to all sorts of viands gathered up haphazard, while some of those who were crowded out were stretching over the shoulders of their more fortunate friends, and snatching at anything that came first to hand.- Some of the elder ladies were assisting Mrs. Upton to pack away stores. of various kinds in the cupboards, while Mr. Upton stood at a sideboard loaded with demijohns of cider, bottles of home-made wine, glasses,

tft.c., assisting his thirsty guests to such liquids as they most favoured. The unceasing din of so many voices rendered it impossible to discover the general tenor of the conversation, though the frequent merry bursts of laughter from the younger visitors, and the cheery re- cognitions of the elders, proved that all were on good terms with each other, and that all were enjoying thernselves.thoroughly."

The character of Captain Jack, the slow-minded sailor of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, is an admirable sketch from real life, which is only spoiled by being forced into a story of no life or interest. If Mr. Maitland had simply described it as one of the striking recollections of his American travels, one proving how near the usually acute American character often approaches to the slow and immovable fixity of English prejudice, it would have been in its way a very remarkable picture. The American Captain Jack might really almost stand as justification for Mr. Dickens' English Captain Cattle, and yet is, as Mr. Maitland admits, not a fancy picture, but a drawing from life. So, too, nothing can be better than the account- of the interview with the editor of the Herald of Freedom, who reads aloud his prospectus of a new electioneering journal to the hero, or one of the heroes, of the tale. These things as items of real experience which the author had stored in his recollection, and justly estimated at their true significance or insignificance in relation to the con- ditions of American society, are really of interest. But as elements of a story they are so awkward that they affect us like Mr. Vincent Crummles' real washing tub and pump introduced to give the effect of reality to his unreal and inartistic scenery,—or like a few real bricks let into the picture of a brick wall.

How thoughtful the author's judgment on what he sees often is cannot be better seen than by reading his explanation of the failure of all the attempts of painters to paint Niagara. It is simply this :— In almost all other scenes of tumult and violence, the painter can find something or other with which to suggest the fury and destruc- tive violence of which he is painting the effects. But Niagara is never perfectly seen except in fair bright weather, and must be painted in such weather, and all the accessories thus suggest no- thing but perfect beauty to the eye ; to the ear, however, the deafen- ing thunder of the Fall tells the terrible might of the great cataract with overwhelming force. But this the painter cannot paint, and he must paint much that is in strong contrast with it without ade- quately suggesting that contrast, conveyed as it is through a quite different sense. This is a fine and doubtless a true criticism, and tells us, like numbers of other passages in this book, how excellent a journal Mr. Maitland might have given us, if his evil genius had not suggested to him to work it up into a poor novel.