16 JANUARY 1886, Page 19

THREE NOVELS BY LADIES.* IN skilful simplicity of plot-construction, in

lightness of artistic touch as exhibited in the delineation of character, and in general

literary excellence, At Ow Bed Glove is the most perfect and enjoyable of all Mrs. Macquioid's works. We might, perhaps, even go farther, and say without hesitation that it will prove her

masterpiece. She has never given us—probably she will never give us—anything better than Madame Carouge and Captain Loigerot; indeed, Mr. Howells, when in his best light-comedy vein, and looking at Continental life from the comfortable and " detached " American point of view, has never produced a better sketch than Captain Loigerot. What a pity it is that other writers of fiction could not follow the example of Mrs.

Macquoid, who first wrote Al the Bed Glove as a short magazine sketch, then subjected it to private "dramatic treatment," and finally wrote it out in its present form ! Pursuing this method, taking, say, three years over a book, Mrs. Oliphant would,

who can doubt, produce the best, certainly (for Mr. George Meredith must be borne in mind) the most thoroughly human fiction since George Eliot went to her rest ? For we should say that it must have been Mrs. Macquoid's mode of procedure that has given us the most notable of the many charming

features of At the Bed Glove,—that which we have termed the skilful simplicity of its plot. To have a plot of such a description, the motive of the story must be slight, and the characters must be few. Both conditions are observed here. The only problem that has to be solved in At the Bed Glove is whether Rudolf

Engemann, the fascinating boarder at the Hotel Beauregard, Berne, is to marry pretty Marie Peyrolles, who aids her cousin, Madame Bobineau, at the Red Glove shop, or his landlady, the handsome Madame Carouge. In addition to these characters, too, there is only one in the story, Captain Loigerot, that needs to be mentioned. The plot, in fact, is devoted entirely to the efforts of Madame Carouge to secure Engemann as her second husband. A husband-hunter is, as a rule, the most unlovely of womankind ; and had some of the worst qualities in Madame Carouge been developed, she might have become a Brinvilliers. Mrs. Macquoid's skill is indicated in making Madame Carouge sometimes the object of pity, and sometimes a subject of amuse- ment, but never altogether repellent. One's sympathy is, indeed, enlisted on the side of the heroine of this story—for such she is, in spite of the rivalry of the timid, pretty shop-girl—in the open- ing chapters, in which she is found united in a loveless marriage of convenience to Carouge, who picks her up in one of the towns of Southern France. Carouge dies when she is but twenty- eight. " Ah ! but after all, I do not owe him much," the beautiful woman said ; "he has wasted my youth. I am eight- and-twenty, and I have not yet begun to live." But she has read and dreamed ; and an ideal lover is one of the inhabitants of her dreamland. This she now seeks to find, and very nearly secures in Rudolf Engemann, a handsome, broad-shouldered Swiss, who boards at the Hotel Beauregard, which is her property, and which she directs through a head waiter, very much as Moltke conducts his campaigns through his lieutenants. Engemann has a liking for her which might have developed into something stronger, as-

" Her eyes were as handsome as ever, large and dark, with droop- ing lashes ; the broad, black eyebrows might have been thought heavy on any one else. On her ripe nectarine-hued skin they were perfect ; but, indeed, when one had gazed fully at Madame Carouge's faultless figure and superb face, one only thought of her eyes and of her lovely month, its upper lip like the crumpled leaf of a damask rose. Perhaps the admiration she invariably created could hardly bear to be dwelt on in detail ; one brought away from her a vision of jewel- like brilliance and velvet softness. She moved with perfect grace, but she looked, perhaps, a trifle proud ; yet in a woman whose head was so divinely placed, and who walked as if the world belonged to her, one expected a little extra dignity."

But there appears on the scene, as assistant to her cousin, Madame Bobineau, at the Red Glove, Marie Peyrolles, a pretty girl fresh from a convent school. Madame Carouge at once

• ett the Bed Glow. By Katherine B. Maegnoid. 3 vols. London : Ward and Downey. 1885.—Boanyborough. By Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney. 2 vols. London : LOIIIP1111.118 and Co. 1225.—Ie Sight of Land. By Lady Doffas Hardy. 3 vols. London: Ward and Dovniey.

scents danger, and her plotting begins. She must have Marie married and out of her way. An instrument appears ready to her hand in the person of Captain Loigerot, a friend of her late husband, who is boarding at her hotel. Loigerot has confided to her that he wishes a wife ; and as he has been smitten by Marie Peyrolles, whom he has seen on her arrival at Berne Railway Station, she thinks she sees her way to a match between them.

Some of Madame Carouge's tactics, especially her coercion of Madame Bobineau into the sacrifice of her relative, are rather questionable. It is, perhaps, needless to say that her plans end in failure, and it would be unfair to Mrs. Macquoid to state how they fail. That in her wrath, however, Madame Carouge should give Captain Loigerot a box on the ear, strikes us as improbable,—and, besides, it is not pretty. Madame Carouge was, in spite of reading, dreaming, and wealth, by no means "quite a lady ;" but her self-command was finished enough to prevent her perpetrating such an atrocious act of vulgarity as this. But Mrs. Macquoid may be forgiven any weaknesses in her portrait of Madame Carouge, for having given us Captain Loigerot, so ridiculous in love, so pompous in manner, and yet £0 magnanimous a gentleman withal. When he dis-

covers how the land lies between Rudolf and Marie, he not only retires from the field with dignity, but he becomes the chief agent in promoting their happiness. One is pleased to see him, in the last chapter, taking so kindly to the role of godfather to the children of the woman he loved sincerely after his own fashion. If At the Bed Glove were merely a good comedy, it would merit very high praise. But it is something more and better.

Bonnyborough, whose author, Mrs. Whitney, has obviously both a style and a public of her own, belongs emphatically to

what is popularly rather than accurately termed the " intro- spective " school of fiction. Indeed, we should have said that it was unhealthily introspective, had not the scene of it been laid in Puritan America, where introspection is a matter of faith, and where the best way of showing one's love for one's neigh-

bour is to tell him of the mote in his eye, provided one has qualified oneself for the duty of criticism by taking the beam

out of one's own. This book is, in reality, a study of Lyman Schott and his young half-sister, with the barbarous name of Peace Polly Schott, who are, in turn, perpetually studying each other.

Peace Polly—why does Mrs. Whitney allow the wretched pun to be made on her name of "Pease Porridge Hot "P—has temper and is self-willed, whereas her brother is a quiet, self-contained man. The result is that for long they do not quite understand each other. But Peace Folly's nature is disciplined and strengthened by time and by communing with a good—almost too good—friend of her brother, Serena Wyse, while the latent heroism of Lyman is revealed by misfortune. The love-making —between Peace Polly and a Professor Fuller on the one hand, and between Lyman and Serena on the other—is rather flat. But the moral light and shade of the society of the essentially Puritan settlement of Bonnyborough, to which the Schotts belong, and to whose rules they more or less faithfully conform, are ad- mirably reproduced. There is, too, a pretty, non-introspective girl, Rose Howick, who seems to belong to Devonshire rather than to New England; and she and her clergyman, Mr. Innesley, who for a time believes himself to be enamoured of Peace Polly, supply the

quiet humour of Bonnyborough, and are welcome as a sort of relief after a surfeit of " professing " Christians and the Inner Light. The conversations in Bonn yborough are very clever, perhaps a trifle too much so. Here is an example from a dialogue on the subject of Peace Polly between Dr. Farron, the Rector of Bonny- borough, and his wife, who are dabblers in science :— "'My dear Sebastian,' she said, the face of such things the scientifically ignorant must either talk top-froth or the depths. I saw that girl's face—Polly's—and I knew that I must keep a buoy afloat, if it were only a pun, or she never would come up again. How tremendously she takes everything !'—' And how tremendous every- thing is !' returned the Doctor.—' That's where the frivolous mission comes in. There has to be a bob wherever there is a sinker. Did you hear what she said in the first place about thoughts ? Yes. It was a fresh putting of the Psalm words,—" How wonderful are thy thoughts unto me, 0 God ! How great is the sum of them !" *— She is a strange girl. Have you ever spoken to her about confirmation ? —' No. Perhaps some day he may come to me. There are spiritual processes I do not care to meddle with. You would not have me try

to hurry one of these little life-globules out of its firmament ? No.

It is too beautiful to watch it just where it And it is sure of its

own time,' said the Doctor. Life may be let alone. It is dying we have to struggle with.'"

It may be doubted if even in America there are people who talk this Liebig's extract of quaintness. If only Mrs. Whitney would give us not a fiery stream, but only occasional flashes, of

eleverness, as when a fussy serving woman is described as having the manners of a cyclone "! nonnyborongh is, however,

a remarkable book.

Lady Duffus Hardy's new novel is not profoundly original in plot, or very striking in any sense ; and the close is tragic in the extreme. Yet it is in every way a conscientious performance

in fiction, and as such it deserves a word of hearty praise. She makes the most of her characters, and, as in the case of Al the Red Glove, they are not too numerous. The centre of attraction is Clarice Lemaire, a delicate, sensitive girl, with a scoundrel father

in the background, and a worthy guardian who, to protect her against her father, takes her with himself to the remote Cornish village of Penally. There the Rector's son, Hugh Spencer, falls in love with her, almost as a matter of course ; and she has a "cousin Jack," who is even more than a lover to her, being a loyal guardian. Lemaire discovers the whereabouts of his daughter, and a battle ensues between him and the guardians of Clarice. Her reason is disturbed, and in a somnambulist trance she actually shoots the man who has been more than a

father to her. This awful deed is discovered by " Jack " Swayne, who carries her off in the dead of night to prevent her from realising what she has done. Ultimately she dies in the

arms of her lover. There could hardly be a more painful story than this, but it is skilfully told. Poor Clarice, too, is well drawn, and so are the hapless Mr. Fleming, the manly Hugh Spencer, and Jack Swayne, the honourable man of the world. Miriam Spencer, Hugh's sister, who sees in Jack Swayne her ideal knight, and in the last chapter seems certain of securing him, is also a capital sketch, though not quite so finished as Clarice. Lady Duffus Hardy's strongest point is not analysis of character,

but scattered through the three volumes which comprise In Sight of Land there are passages like the following, which is

decidedly superior to the particular kind of analysis that passes muster in ordinary fiction :—

"The Rev. Joseph Spencer was a mild, mousy-looking man, with a soft, sliding motion, and a low, soft voice that had something of the purring quality of the pussy-cat in it. His countenance expressed nothing in particular ; it was generally, when in society, clothed in smiles, and wore an amicable air of self-satisfaction. Some people say the face is an index to the mind ; it may be so, but it is an index that requires a great deal of correction before it can be admitted in the current edition of human nature. Taking the Rev. Joseph Spencer's face as an index to his mind, you would have said there was nothing in it, which would be a mistake, for he had a great deal of mind ; it might not be of the finest quality, but there was plenty of

it, such as it was His wife, Mrs. Spencer was what is called a thoroughly good woman—she kept the ten command- ments as respectable, well-regulated sinners generally do ; she never outraged propriety, and the high, rigidly moral tone of her mind was a thing unquestioned ; in fact, she had so many principles crowded into a small space that none of them had room to grow or bear any pleasant fruit; one principle reacted so strongly upon another that they became a tangled mass, dwarfed and stunted, whence no

generous or kindly thing could be extricated Her really sterling good qualities were marred by their hard casing ; but never- theless she was a good woman, detestably good ! A few feminine follies, a touch of tenderness, a gleam of kindliness, might have won affectionate regard ; many worse women are dearly loved, she was only tolerated."