CARR OF CARRLYON.*
Hammon- Ami's stories are all of one kind, eminently clever and eminently. disagreeable. She thoroughly understands her scene, which is always the same—that border-land of the true continental life into which well-informed Englishmen often penetrate, and as often mistake for the national life beyond. She describes with force and eloquence, can create a character, and groups incidents with more than the care and effect of our ordinary dramatists. Yet, with all these qualifications for success, her novels cannot be said really to succeed. They interest without pleasing us. Nobody who has once opened them lays them down unfinished, but then nobody hesi- tates to utter a sigh of relief because that task at last is over. The truth is, the power of the authoress, though very considerable, is very limited in its range. She has as little humour as most women, and but faint wit, no eye for the minor duties and motives of life, no appreciation of ordinary or feeble character, little faculty of analysis, and from the same defect of humour, no true human pathos. She can describe intensity of every kind, whether in passion or hate, malice or fear, superstition or self-devotion, hut there her competence ends, and the strain on the reader's attention—the effort to realize feelings he cannot feel, becomes in the end fatiguing. her successful characters are all exceptional beings, heroes swayed hither and thither by some master impulse, women whose souls are absorbed in some terrible secret, or torn by the violence of some overwhelming pas- sion. Whenever she steps beyond this line, and tries to describe men and women such as make up nine-tenths of the world, she pro- duces only a lay figure with features which, after pursuing them through three volumes, the reader forgets in an hour. She can draw both Hamlet and Ophelia, but the characters among whom they live and move are too faint and feeble for the stage. This defect was visible even in "Rita," by far the best of her novels, and is pain- fully apparent in Carr of Carrion. We have here eight prominent characters—the hero and his mother, the heroine and her mother and father, her friend, and a young and poverty-stricken Italian noble and his mother. Of the eight, six are exceptional, either in character or circumstances, and two are, for all true purposes of artistic story- telling, mere dummies. The heroine's father, Mr. Courteney, has eloped in early life with her mother, and the two bear about with them this secret as a kind of curse, making the man unnaturally self- resttained and sarcastic—he is said to be learned and wise, but never gives proof of either—and the woman self-denying, pious, and given to fainting-fits. In real life, where we should not see, as we do in the story, the motive which exaggerates their demeanour, they would be singularly unpleasant people, with no other marked peculiarity. The Italian noble, Guido Lamberti, lives in a whirlpool of emotions—hatred to priests, love for Italy, sternly suppressed love for the heroine, and overstrained mag- nanimity. He refuses to accept the girl he loves because he is poor; refuses the girl who loves him, because she loves him too, much; fights for Italy, and, after a series of "intense" adventures, finally dies of hunger. He is a very noble fellow, according to a lady's idea of nobility, very brave, and self-restrained, and self-devoted; but he is very like the marvellous curate of the regular young lady's novel, transported to a different scene. The way in which he receives the advances of Sara Gisborne is a wonder of woodenness. His mother only appears in order to worry him with her abject devotion to a Jesuit priest, and is, in fact, nothing but a vague personification of supersti- tion, just as Lady Carrlyon, the hero's mother, is a personification of malicious pride. She never does anything not dictated by that feeling, and one wonders whether she infused that bad emotion into her method of taking soup, or slept with the same expression on her face. But the author's favourite character, on which she has evidently be- stowed affectionate pains, is Sara Gisborne. This rung lady, Creole in type, is a natural daughter of Mr. Courteney, and, aware of her birth, bates her father, and, madly in love with Guido, detests her sister. On her father's death she forges an informal codicil, which Mrs. Conrteney is compelled to obey, under threat of exposure, and offers herself to Guido, who rejects her, in a scene curiously unnatural, then follows him to battle as a volunteer, and takes part in several actions, is again rejected by him in hospital, exposes the Courteneys, beguiles a great Neapolitan roué into marrying her ; as Duehesse de Valentinois lives the life of a great Lorette, again offers herself to Gaido, now starving in Paris, and, once more rejected, gives great and most successful ball, and takes prussic acid. Such a career, though not probable, is not so improbable as to take it out of the range of possibilities. Lady Essex, who stood by Buckingham's side as a page as he slew her husband, could have done all Sara Gisborne is repre- sented as doing; but a great novelist in painting such a career, .would have expended his power in accounting for it—in reducing it to the laws which regulate human feelings. Sara is not accounted for at all_ We never get even a glimpse of her inner life. We are told that she is the victim of passion, and see that she does passionate things, but only see them as we might in a crowd. The terrible mental strain and conflict which must have raged in such a breast, and which alone make a " simious sensual woman" such as she is described,—who chains men to obtain money, and, if physically virtuous, is guilty, as Guido Lamberti says, "of prostitution of the soul,"—a fit subject for art, are wholly absent. We get more of them in a police-court, when some poor girl drowns herself, leaving nothing
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* Carr of Carripon. By Hamilton AMIS. Smith, Elder, and Co. to tell her history but a letter of twenty lines. Sara is the heroine of a tragic ballet, "black browed," "fully developed," who stamps, raves, and gesticulates, and when her gyrations leave her mental petticoats a little too short, thinks that an additional attraction. She makes long speeches, avowing her hate, and her love, and her evil ambition, but we feel that she simply describes herself instead of the novelist doing it for her. She reveals nothing of herself, unless it be in five lines of acute criticism on Messalina, which Mr. Courteney was, we think, quite justified in snubbing her for, but which really afford a glimpse into the cesspool she calls her soul. We watch her with interest as we should in the ballet, but it is for the things she does, not from curiosity as to why she does them. There remain the hero and heroine who are not exaggerations, and being intended to be natural, are beyond Hamilton Aides range. Lawrence Carr stops at Bologna, is attracted by a pretty English face, obtains an introduction by stratagem, proposes to the young lady, who tells him she loves another, marries her nevertheless, is tormented by jealousy, and on the death of his wife lives a grace- fully repentant English peer. His jealousy being wholly unreason- able, and to English minds almost inconceivable, is exceedingly well portrayed, but nothing else is. Except that he is very obstinate, and has a smile which informs his valet that he is in love, and will consequently remain three months in Bologna, he has, when not mad with jealousy, scarcely a character at all, less than his wife, who does certainly ex- hibit a trace of resignation, and some compressed -passion which leads her to do imprudences, and, consequently, leaves on the reader's mind some notion of what manner of woman Gilda Carrlyon may have been. It is, however, a very indefinite one. We under- stand what she was like when moved by the one strong feeling of her life, but of the whole woman, the living character whose action might be anticipated from her nature, we understand nothing at all. She is a shrouded figure whose outline we only catch when in violent action. It is possible that Hamilton Aide can correct this defect, can analyze as well as describe, explain motives as well as recount facts, show us living beings instead of fine but statuesque impersona- tions; but till she does, we can only give her credit for skilful manipu- lation, and reserve the higher praise of artistic, i.e. creative, power.
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