LIZZIE.*
A DISAGREEABLE novel is bad enough, but a disagreeable novel that is also unnatural has no plea for existence at all. We cannot deny the wisdom of selecting painful subjects for works of fiction, for there can be no doubt that they offer greater scope for power- ful and lifelike portraiture and for unexpected turns of circum- stance, than when everything runs smoothly and happily along a suety course ; just as rugged scenery or stormy seas supply deeper and sharper lights and shades, and more startling and striking effects, than gently-undulating downs or the placid ocean, under summer skies. But the more remarkable the subject, the more masterly must be the manipulation, and the more intimate the acquaintance with its characteristics. The quiet sea or sunny meadows, if weakly or ignorantly treated, we pass unnoticed ; but the rugged crags or bursting storm must catch the eye, and they offend us deeply if their lines, and lights, and colours be out of drawing, and contrary to nature.
Wuthering Heights is as horrible as a nightmare, but it seizes and enchains our attention by its absolute reality,—not only by the
* Lf ale. By Lady Duffuu-Hardy. London: Hurst and Bbutkott.
power of imagination, but also by the intimate knowledge of its subject and the unflinching fidelity of the drawing. Kenilworth is painful to the last degree, but while we resolve a hundred times to fling it down, and scarce can bear to read more of the pitiful story of Amy's wrongs, or to contain our indignation with the weak Leicester or the villain Varney, yet we clutch it all the time and fret at interruption, because Scott—though hardly as familiar with the endless variety of character he essayed to paint as was Emily Brontd with the rugged Yorkshire Dalesmen- divined with a subtle power and transferred to his canvas with a delicate touch the qualities of those who could do the deeds which either he made them do, or which history taught that they had actually done. But there are few who can conceive char- acter as did Scott where he did not know it, and fewer still who observe so keenly and portray so powerfully as did the Brontes ; and certainly Lady Duffus-Hardy is not of those few.
If only we were more trusted, how gladly we would save the jaded and fretful seekers after fresh excitement from the worry and disappointment which, like mine-adventurers, they encounter in prospecting" for literary ore into the bowels of these moun- tains of nineteenth-century novels, where so seldom they strike a lode of any value, and seldomer still a vein of the precious metals. Oh that we could send them back to Scott and Miss Austen— those great novelists, the centenaries of whose births both occur in these present seventies—and ourselves separate for them the ore from the dross of modern fiction, in our boundless pity for their blindness !
Lady Duffus-Hardy's dramatis persona leave upon us the im- pression of nothing more than hard, wooden puppets, with their authoress somewhere behind, uttering for them the sort of speeches that, judging from their costume and theatrical pose, would be appropriate for each in turn. The story is one of those we have
spoken of,—very unpleasant in subject, and almost unrelieved by any touch of nature. It begins with a murder and ends with a murder, a%d lands a poor, weak, vain fellow in a madhouse. There is not a single pleasing character, though there are six that are meant to be admirable ; they are not only unreal, but are without the semblance of reality which consistency will
give. There is a sort of purpose in the story at the outset, an attempt to reveal the causes and point out the wickedness and dangers of labourers' unions,—associations which are sillily travestied by our authoress. But after a vague and entirely one-sided statement of a few details of the case, it falls off into nothing, and the incidents that give rise to these expressions of opinion, merely do duty, as a part of the plot, in bringing two of the characters into trouble.
Lady Duffus-Hardy is apparently a Tory of the old school. All her good people are good—we may say prejudiced—old Tories ; of her four Radicals, one is the cringing, mean-spirited " Liberal " Member ; another is an adventurer and a murderer ; the third is distinguished by a type of vanity more extravagant than any we ever read of, and his end is madness ; while the fourth has what is called common-sense, and sees the error of his ways—at least he sees plainly enough on which aide his bread is buttered, and he very soon and quietly breaks with the Radical set and returns to the allegiance of his fathers. "The Colonel" is, of course, a self-willed old gentleman of the aristocratic type ; truly brave, courteous, and honourable ; living in one of "the ancient homes of the old aristocratic race"— "the nouveaux riches may build their huge palace-houses," &c.— we wonder if it ever occurred to Lady Duffus-Hardy that " the ancient homes " were once new, or that " the old aristocratic race " has generally sprung from the " nouveaux riches,"—but we see little courtesy in his curt dismissal of the young enthusiast who asks his opinion of his poem ; nor anything honourable in his oppo- sition to his nephew's unequal marriage, while he couples it with his sanction to his "amusing himself " with the young lady, a course to which he "cannot object," so long as he "takes care not to com- mit himself seriously." Nor, again, can we call the old gentleman brave while he stands by and allows his daughter to be thus violently attacked and abused by his nephew, because she cannot agree to his wish, that she should go to the rescue of his lady-love, the vulgar adventurer's daughter :—
" But, Lemuel, I'm sure you—' 'Ab! no words!' he exclaimed, interrupting her quickly, and waving her off—' no more words, I beseech you. For months—I may say for years—you have goaded me almost to madness by the gall and wormwood droppings from your cruel tongue ; you have taken every opportunity of casting a slur upon her—the woman I love boat in all this world ; you have done your utmost to sneer away her good name, and tear her reputation to tatters, as a wild beast rends his prey. No, I want no explanation,' he added, as she again attempted to speak; 'none is needed—and no more words. The time for action is pat. If you were to attempt to go to her now, I myself would bar the way. In all her trouble and humiliation I love and honour her. She is grander and nobler in my eyes—and I believe in the eyes of God, who made you both—than you, in your cruel pride and selfish nature. Woman to woman might at least be tender and pitiful. I went nigh to loving you once, Alice Pomeroy—now I despise—ah ! worse than that—if I could hate any woman, it would be you."
And this fine, outspoken young man—too outspoken, we venture to think—who is another type of virtue, not only abuses his girl- cousin as above, but treats his old uncle with gross disrespect, and deliberately sets about to let loose on society a low villain, who has, he knows, been guilty of murder, because he is the father of his beloved. The same inconsistency between the char- acter we are told to accept, and the character as drawn, we find in all the other personages of the story. Lizzie, all refinement and gentleness, surprises us occasionally with saucy vulgarity. Abel, the good, steady son, oftentimes deserves to have his cars boxed for his insolent speech to his old father and the Colonel ; and his rapid conversion from Radicalism reads like anything but a study from nature. The only character with any consistency is that of the vulgar adventurer himself—and he is thoroughly unnatural— for the noble Julia, who is the next best sustained, would never have been so moved at the personal safety of a father she utterly hated and despised; nor would she, under the circumstances, have allied herself with a Pomeroy. A propos of this misalliance, Lady Duffus-Hardy, in siding with the nephew about fidelity to his lady-love through thick and thin, forgets altogether that the young man is not only proposing to sacrifice his own social reputation in his alliance with a murderer's daughter, but that of his unborn children and grandchildren. We can- not think how she came to deprive the old Colonel of such an unanswerable argument against the marriage. The story seems to us as unnatural as the characters. The robber and murderer leaves California, where he has gathered his ill-gotten gains, and takes up his abode at Padborougb, within an easy walk for his daughter of the home of the murdered man's son, who had left California in his childhood. As ill-luck—or good-luck for the story—will have it, the sister, who was present at the murder, returns in a dozen years, and soon recognises the noble Julia and her father, who is a sworn friend of her brother. The murderer is warned that he is recognised, notwithstanding which, without any at all adequate cause, he deliberately in- sults, in public, his vain and irascible young friend, who then becomes his deadly enemy. The other incidents do not seem to us much more in accordance with what might be expected. There is, too, a want of variety ;—the two old fathers are as alike in character and opinion as is possible in men of such different rank; the two heroines are the same clinging, faithful, devoted creatures; the two heroes are also alike in everything,—character, opinion, and even physique, and we get quite tired of the way in which they are always seen from the windows "coming swinging along." The old men, too, are of course tall and upright ; the old private in particular is "as upright as a dart, with limbs as long and strong as those of an ancient athlete ;" we don't wonder at the strength of at least one of these limbs, when we learn, two pages further on, that he went to meet his son "as fast as his wooden leg would allow him to stump along." This is unconscious and unintentional fun, for there is no humour in the book, unless we so count a sort of imitation of Dickens in descriptions of the cosy
festivities of the semi-jovial, semi-domestic kind, when the actors rush into extravagant and somewhat boisterous good-nature,--as when Tirgie suddenly dresses an old farm servant's hair, and bedecks her with ribbons ; or unless we are to regard the specimen of poetry, which the vain and conceited Walter reads aloud, in the light of a comic song,—certainly we cannot accept it as even possible, that the vainest and most ignorant of rhymesters should
have believed this parody on the "Queen of the May" to be either original or poetry. But Lady Duffus-llardy has some talent for burlesque, which peeps out in these rhymes, and in the account of "the Enlightened Labourers' Association."
We venture to think, altogether, judging by the retrogade direction of her recent productions as regards literary skill, that Lady Duffus-Hardy misses her vocation hi fiction ; her observa- tion is neither keen nor accurate, nor are her powers of faithful delineation in any way remarkable. But if she would turn her attention to the real wants of the people either of towns or the country, and write bravely and honestly about them from their point of view, we think that she might do it well, and exert a valuable influence over her own class in favour of that below her. There is some evidence in the book before us, that she under- stands social and, to some extent, political questions, if she could only lay aside hereditary prejudice, and be faithful to her honest convictions.
Previous page
