NOVELS OF THE WEEK.*
SPEAKING at Edinburgh last year, Mr. Arthur Balfour expressed his surprise that modern novelists did not more frequently cast their romances in the form of life-histories. As a matter of fact, several notable examples of this kind of novel had been published shortly before Mr. Balfour spoke, while in the present year the "life-history" has become almost as common as the "cloak and sword" romance. Windyhaugh, the latest, and certainly not the least interesting or successful, of these elaborate studies, is from the pen of the clever author of Mona Maclean. We use the word " elaborate " advisedly, for the author introduces us to the heroine at the age of seven, traces her growth—mental, spiritual, and physical—until she is turned twenty, and gives us a peep of her as a happy matron some five or six years later. The story falls into five divisions. In the first, Wilhelmina Galbraith, a motherless, reserved, and highly sensitive child, is G.) Waal/bench. By Graham Travers (Margaret Todd. M.D.) London: William Blackwood and ilons.—(2.) The Adventures of Frit. pis. By S. Weir Mitchell. London: Macmillan and 0o.-13.) A False Chevalier. By W. Lightliall. London : Edwnrd Arnold.—(4.) The Others—Dv Ono of Them. By R. Relsh. Bristol: J. W. Arrowsmith; London : Bimplrin and 0o.—(5 Judith Boklero. By William .T. Dawson. London: James Bowden.—(6.) Cr.,,,' and Cleopatra. By Khalil Boadek M.D. Lon'oni Edwin Venetian and 00.--47.) Shadowed by the Gods. By Merles Edwardes Landon Fends and 00,--(8.) The Kew Of the Hall House. By Albert Leo, London: 0. Arthur Pearson.--(9.) The Star Child. By Wini■s-ed Graham. Landau: %rot and Elackett.— (104 The Doom of Han D0711411tiO. Br GP 409 ahr. London : J. M. Dent snd 0o.—(11.) Since the Borinning. By Hign C'ilTird. Landon: Grunt liLhards.—(12.) Bt./Ratak By A. J. Dairz01. L Ion Ma millau Aud Co. living in Scotland, under the rigid rule of her puritanical grand- mother. On the death of the latter she accompanies her father- to London, and when he marries again, becomes the Cinderella,. drudge, and factotum of her stepmother's boarding-house. In this stage, again, her religions aspirations are temporarily satisfied by a course of emotional Evangelicalism. Thirdly, on the death of her stepmother, she spends two happy years. atschool undergoing what the author calls a "pagans reaction" before returning to Scotland to keep house for her- father, whose finances have been rehabilitated by a run of lack at the gambling tables. Wilhelmina, though fascinated: bewildered, and dazzled by her brilliant father, is not con- tented with her surroundings, and loses her heart to the first attractive young man she meets, a brilliant but rather over-cultured Cambridge man, with a tendency to. nervous headaches, and a statuesque and oppressively high- minded sister. Immediately after her marriage, Wilhelmina,. rashly yielding to curiosity, discovers from a letter addressed, to her husband by his sister that he had proposed in a moment of chivalrous expansion and had realised that she (Wilhelmina) was intellectually on a lower plane. Whereupon Wilhelmina leaves him promptly, becomes a governess, studies science, achieves something more than a mere succes d'estime as an actress, and having thus justified her existence intellectually, is extremely glad to return to her husband, who has played the- waiting game with unexpected patience. After Wilbelmina, the most finished and interesting portraits are those of her father,. a handsome wastrel with a magnetic personality, irresistible manners, and a total absence of scruples ; her aunt, Mrs.. Dalrymple, a beautiful, easy-going, cynical woman of fashion ; and, best of all, a shrewd old Scotch grocer, who befriends the heroine in her lonely childhood. The- early chapters are the most natural and lifelike of an ex- tremely clever and thoughtful novel. Its worst faults are that; it is too consistently exalli in tone, too intense in sentiment, too literary in style. Wilhelmina's husband writes to his sister as Sorella mia," and addresses her as "My beautiful Honor." Still, we can almost forgive him his preciosity for the admirably appropriate way in which he is made to quote- Heine's magnificent lines on the riddle of life. Besides, be is meant to be something of a prig; and when she chooses. "Graham Travers" shows a very pretty sense of humour.
Not long ago we noticed Mr. Bernard Capes's vivid romance of the Terror, the Memoirs of the Comte de in Muette, an admirable pendant to which is forthcoming in The Adventures. of Francois, by Dr. Weir MitchelL The hero of the American author's story is a foundling, who in succession fills the rotas of choir-boy, thief, juggler, and fencing-master, and eventually dies in his bed as the confidential servant of a noble family in Tonraine. Francois is an exceedingly engaging personage, whose character is happily summed up in the words of his benefactress : "He had many delicacies of character, but that of which nature meant to make a gentleman and a man of refinement, desertion and ill-fortune made a thief and repro- bate." Thus he had "no definite working conscience," but an inborn kindness of heart ; his courage is of fine quality,. and, above all, his gaiety is invincible. His sympathy for all animals is charmingly illustrated, and yet be is a ruthless, fighter. Dr. Mitchell's straightforward style compares un- favourably with the literary virtuosity of Mr. Capes, but his. virile energy largely compensates for this lack of finesse: The terrible old harpy known as the Crab, one of the "devil.. women" of the Terror, is presented as realistically as any amateur of the gruesome can desire, and, without over- doing his horrors, Dr. Mitchell treats the reader quite liberally enough in this regard. A notable point in the story is the influence exerted by Francois's peculiar physiognomy and, physique on his fortunes. Some years ago the "magnificently ugly" hero—Charlotte Bronte's Rochester in Jane Eyre was the prototype—attained a certain vogue ; here, however, the attribute of physical abnormality is artistically and legiti- mately assigned to so complex a character. With The Adventures of Francois we may conveniently bracket another interesting romance of the French Revolution entitled A False Chevalier. The Revolution, however, is only employed to emphasise the tragedy of the catastrophe, the dominant interest of the story lying outside the great social an political upheaval of the time. Germain Lecour is a young Canadian, the son of a fur-trader, who on earning to France yields to the temptation to claim a rank and title to which he
has no right, and having won the affections of a beautiful Baroness, is driven to all manner of desperate resorts to maintain himself in his false position. As an officer of the Queen's bodyguard he is a marked man, and the bitterness of his death sentence is hardly alleviated by the concession of his Judges to spare the life of the Baroness if he will con- fess his imposture in her presence. Germain, in spite of his deception, is a pathetic figure, and apart from an occasional angularity of expression, the story is decidedly promising for a first venture.
The humours of a family circle as recorded by the "critic nn the hearth "—to borrow the late Mr. James Payn's phrase —form the theme of The Others—By One of Them, a volume instinct with a spirit of kindly satire and shrewd observa- tion. The dramatis personm are "Papa," an opportunist politician, urbane in public, but exacting and self-indulgent in the home circle; his wife, a placid and inconsequent matron; three sons and three daughters. The scheme of the work—a series of detached episodes and anecdotic character sketches—dispenses with plot, sensation, or anything of a tragic complexion. Occasionally, as in the chapter on nurses, serious note is faintly sounded, but in the main the author never deviates from the path of comedy. After "Papa," whose complacent egotism is an inexhaustible source of entertainment, the most engaging figure is the dainty and irresponsible Celia, one of the beauties of the family, endowed with a ready wit which seldom fails her even in the most trying contretemps. Many of her °biter dicta are excellent, as, for example, that "curates are the milk-puddings of life," or that "no man with two good- looking daughters ought to lose a seat." Of the sons, Bob, the schoolboy, is a capital specimen of the domestic terror, and his prize essay on girls is a miracle of uncompromising candour. The chapter on the barrister friends of the family and " Papa's " views on doctors are distinctly amusing, but the further we get away from the home circle the more con- Tentional and the less genial is the satire. The hygienic faddist, however, is effectively ridiculed, and the cynical bachelor uncle is cleverly drawn. One or two of the chapters, which are merely strings of anecdotes, might well have been omitted, as the peculiar point of view of the narrator, which lends continuity and freshness to the book, is dropped, and the quality of the humour is inferior. With these reserva- tions, this latest and most " up-to-date " follower of Theo- phrastus is a welcome recruit amid the sparse ranks of -writers who aim at refreshing rather than depressing their readers.
Mr. William Dawson's Judith Bolder° is a gloomy but powerful story of the Norfolk coast some sixty years ago. The heroine is suspected by her husband of direct complicity in a murder which she had witnessed, and of which he is accused. Accordingly, misinterpreting her silence he makes no effort to protest his innocence, and goes to the gallows to shield her. Judith ultimately denounces the real culprit, who expiates his guilt in a manner recalling the death of Bill Sikes. The story is finely conceived, and its sombre picturesqueness loses nothing by the manner of its telling. The impressive- ness of the tragedy, however, is impaired by a lack of relief. King Lear gains rather than loses by the presence of the fool. 'Dr. Khalil Saadeh's historical romance, Cxsar and Cleopatra, does not bear out the promise of his preface. He writes with fluency and an adequate knowledge of the history of the period, but the dialogue is undistinguished, and such exclamations as "Bless my life !" from Ptolemy, and "Hallo, Mark ! " from Csar are hardly attuned to the dignity of the argument.
Mr. Charles Edwardes breaks new, or at least unfamiliar, ground in Shadowed by the Gods, a tale of Old Mexico. The 'tremendous nomenclature of Aztecs—it is enough to mention such instances as Xocojotzin, Titziliputzli, and Huixachtla- does not lend itself to romance, and Mr. Edwardes's conscien- tious attention to detail—e.g., "What Aztlan maid had ever poured the rancid pulque into the royal goblet with better grace ? "—does not render his story more attractive. Human sacrifice plays an important part in the story, which is a meritorious tour de farce. But to render justice to so out- .1a.ndish a theme an author needs the lurid imagination plus the literary gifts of a Flaubert. Mr. Albert Lee handles a more tractable theme in The Key of the Holy House, a romance of Antwerp in the days of the Spanish oppression,
and handles it in vigorous, if somewhat conventional, fashion. Since his first appearance in "The Babes in the Wood," the
wicked uncle of romance has seldom played such an amazing part as Mr. Strickland Boardman, the villain of The Star Child, who keeps his nephew, a musical genius, in close captivity, and palms off the boy's compositions as his own.
When Heinrich makes his escape and plays before a real live Princess, even the sun came forth to witness his dibut, whereon "` the heavens send their lime-light,' whispered a voice in the hushed assembly." Some one ought to compile a liber ineiotiarum from the works of modern novelists. The Doom of Mary Dominic is a painfully depressing romance of modern Ireland. As a study of Irish manners and tempera- ment it is open to question at many points. Thus we cannot
help thinking that no Irish peasant would treat his fallen daughter in the way Michael Dominic behaves to the heroine.
Mr. Hugh Clifford's Since the Beginning is the story of the terrible vengeance of a white man's discarded Malayan mistress on his innocent wife. Mr. Clifford's style lacks the sombre magic of Mr. Joseph Conrad—the romantic inter.
preter par excellence of life in the Malay Archipelago—but his knowledge of the race is intimate and his attitude sympathetic. We cannot refrain from quoting a curious passage on the glamour of the Oriental night :— "This moonlight of Asia is typical of the glamour which will always bang about the rags of the East while our World lasts. Viewed at the right time, and seen in this deceptive light, all manner of things in themselves hopelessly evil and unlovely have power to fascinate as far more attractive objects too often fail to do. This is the reason that may be seen to lie at the back of half the misfortunes, and ninety per cent, of the tragedies, in which Europeans in Asia become involved."
English novelists nowadays are nothing if not cosmopolitan in their choice of a scene. We have in this week's batch
already noticed romances of Mexico, the Netherlands, and the Malay Archipelago. Bisniillah, the last book on our list, transports us to Morocco, where the conflicting aims and ambitions of Jews, Moors, and Christians furnish forth a very pretty international entanglement, and the role of deus ex niachina' is assigned to a Swedish Don Quixote.
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