FATED TO BE FREE.* Miss INGELow has either done her
English readers a grievous wrong, or has paid them a great compliment. She has taken her American friends so cosily into her confidence in the preface to the American edition of her latest novel, telling them so frankly of her theories and her methods, that her countrymen may well feel a little unsatisfied at not being similarly favoured, even though they should charitably put the best construction on her action, and assume that she credits them with a clearer intelli- gence and a capacity to pierce more readily beyond the veil of artistic intention. But therein an old proverb which runs, "Least said, soonest mended," and witty Voltaire wrote long ago, "Pity the man who tries to say everything." Good wine needs no bush, and surely a good story should scorn a preface, particularly a pre- face which justifies novelties by announcing critical principles and unfolding a theory of art. That, however, is what Miss Ingelow has done, and she must forgive us for saying that she has not done it well. Her story might have passed muster among the crowd, and her name have carried it to a certain measure of success, as publishers count success ; but when she informs the public that it was meant to lead the way in a great reform, it claims such scrutiny as might not otherwise have been bestowed upon it.
Her theory is that all our fiction is running in a wrong groove, because novel-writers generally object to try "to say everthing." and will select bits here and there, treating persons with slavish inconsistency, choosing their heroes, for the most part, from among the young and attractive, and doing little justice to infants, xniddle.aged, plain, and elderly people. Life with the novelists is not the least like life itself, which is strangely confused and out of order. Things in dull reality do not assort themselves so happily, and incidents and crises do not come in the nick of time, as the novelists falsely represent. Art is in this way terribly outraged. Miss Ingelow therefore seriously seta herself to show a better way. She will begin at the beginning, and assume nothing ; her people shall be just such as are met in the hum-drum of every-day life ; she will have no heroines, or they shall be plain widows, with whom love-making is no longer a matter of excitement, but of
• Feted to k Free. By Jean Ingelow, S Toll. London: Tinsley.
calculation ; one member of a family shall not be drawn at full- length, and another disposed of with a scratch or two ; above all, she will make it a point of honour to allot as nearly as may be equal space to each of a whole network of families, for in real life families often do tend to get inextricably inter-connected. "Genealogies not interesting ! pooh, my Melcombes and Mord- mers," we can fancy her saying to herself, "shall disproVe this, once and for ever !"
Do our readers fancy we are constructing a possible preface for the mere fun of the thing? Far from it. Let two little para- graphs quoted verbatim from this notable preface—" American Preface "—assure them we are in sober earnest :—
" It seemed proper to crowd the pages with children, for, in real life, they run allover. The world is covered thickly with the prints of their little footsteps, though, as a rule, books written for grown-up people are kept almost clear of them. It seemed proper, also, to make the more im- portant and interesting events of life fall at rather a later age than is commonly chosen, and also to make the moro important and interest- ing persons not extremely young; for in fact, almost all the noblest and finest wen, and the loveliest and sweetest women of real life, are con- siderably older than the vast majority of heroes and heroines in the world of fiction. I have also let some of the same characters play a part in both this story and Of the Skelligs, though the last opens long before the first, and runs on after it is finished. It is by this latter device that I have chiefly hoped to give to each the air of a family history, and thus excite curiosity and invite investigation."
Certainly, the world is full of children ! It is long since the political economists found that out. As Miss Ingelow elegantly puts it, "they run all over." But so do foolish people and bores, a fact of which Miss Ingelow, it would seem, has made due note also. How else can we account for the prominence given to Laura and her silly escapades with Joseph Swan, the gardener's son, and Justine Fairbairn, and the rest? It is true that this is all according to fact, as bliss Ingelow has previously convinced herself, but it is certainly not according to art, whose one rule is to select, adjust, and suggest, in such a way as renders it more exhaustive than any chronicle, however complete ; beguiling "us into something like a sense of reality" by a subtler process than "overcrowding," even though it may be of children who "run all over," and making us fancy that we are reading of things that really occurred, without the clumsy imitation of an "unskilled chronicle."
On Miss Ingelow's own confession, this story, to be fully com- prehended, must be made to dovetail into her former one, so that we have really a novel in seven closely-printed volumes ! It does not seem that she has much concern for the hurry and ex- citement of this great age. Like a certain notable, of whom the waggish poet of America sings so well, Miss Ingelow can, in a double sense, "break the legs of time." She gives us a story which begins at an earlier date than a former one, and at the same time ends at a later date than it does ! This is dovetailing with a vengeance ! And she has been so inconsistent—or so sternly self-consistent—as to introduce a "bloody mystery," which at the end remains at least three-fourths a mystery still. Perhaps four volumes further may be on the way, with a new generation of children, that in real life also "run all over," with the last instalment also of the revelation ! It right well becomes an author who has been so incontinent in characters to be economical of mysteries ! "Each house has its skeleton," that is clearly the proverb that was running in Miss Ingelow's mind, one rather given to proverbial philosophy, be it said ; and though in the novel we arc at intervals introduced to no fewer than five wise and intelli- gent men who are engaged in seeking a solution of the mystery, we are left in the long-run to our own devices. "So like life !" we can fancy the novelist saying, for our encouragement, but a simple person might well feel that he had been cheated out of his right. Or can it be that Miss Ingelow, finding herself involuntarily on the perilous brink of a genuine love-affair that would have justified the title, had to fall back, after all, on the "mystery."
And then. how we do wish that Miss Ingelow had not been so cruel,'so wantonly and coldly cruel ! Poor Valentine ! We had hopes of him ; he was so bright, and good, and full of promise. But he must succumb under that half-and-half ghost, which Miss Ingelow would have us fancy was so very real. Let us hope that as "people do not die of broken hearts" in real life, so neither do half-and-half ghosts hurry on the deaths of decent young men like Valentine. Perhaps Miss Ingelow means rather to show him as the victim of his own self-sacrifice in that half-and-half love- affair, but she does it very badly, and her real life is thus far more sad than the deepest tragedy, without any of its relieving elements. We cannot but regard this novel as, in every point of view, one of the most grievous failures ever made by a woman of undoubted genius, and the poor scribblers who stand reproved by Miss Ingelow may take courage. It is not enough that a novel is good in parts, that we now and then come on bits of faithful character- drawing and clever dialogue. It must be constructed with a clear and dominant leading purpose, to which all is held in strict rela- tion, and so graduated and kept in tone. Miss Ingelow's story has no real centre,—it has properly no beginning, no middle, no end ; one part is of as much significance as another, as we may presume real life is to the utterly unimaginative and undiscerning. It is because the artist sees that which is typical, and follows up only that which is in spiritual accord with it, that art, even in the form of novel-fiction, can teach by choice examples and purify by fear ; and though novels may now and then be trifling, because written by people of no experience or depth of thought, that can be no reason whatever why a woman of power should, in thoughtless reaction, condescend to a mere parody of "family chronicles." Wherever Miss Ingelow has worked in full view of her theory, her work is simply bad,—confused, and without true motive. If she had been well advised by some candid friend simply to cut all that away as hurtful excrescence, and then to recompose her story on a simpler - plan, it might have been effective and full of point ; for it would be unjust to say that she does not give ample evidence of her capacity to write well, when she escapes for a moment from the monstrous theory which has got hold of her. The woman who could write the following sketch of the meeting of old Mrs. Melcombe and her sons after long estrangement condemns her own theory by the writing of it. The old lady, exercised by the thought of her funeral, and who should "follow her," at last resolves to ask her sons to come to see her. They come, and are introduced, not by the name of Melcombe, but of Mortimer
Whatever anxiety, whatever sensations of maternal affection might have been stirring within her, it is certain that her first feeling was one of intense surprise. The well-remembered faces that she had cherished now for much more than half a century—the tall, beautiful youth, the fine boy, almost a child, that had gone off with him—could they be now before her ? She was not at all oblivious of the flight of time ; she did not forget that the eldest of these sons was scarcely nineteen years younger than herself ; yat she had made no defined picture of their present faces in her mind, and it was not with- out a troubled sense of wonder that she rose and saw coming on towards her two majestic old men with hair as white as snow. Her first words wore simple and hesitating. She immediately knew them from one
another. 'Son Dan'el,' she said, turning to the taller, expect this is you ;' and she shifted her staff to her loft hand, while he took the right; and then the other old man, coming up, stooped and kissed her on the forehead. Madame Mekombe shed a few tears. Both her sons looked disturbod and very ill at ease. She sat
down again, and they sat opposite to her 'Son Dan'el,' she said, my time must be short now, and I have sent for you and your brother to ask a favour of you. I could not lie easy in my grave if I thought there would be nobody of all my children to follow me. I have none but poor Peter's daughter and grandson here now, and I hope you, end Augustus, and your sons will come to my funeral. I hope you'll promise me faithfully, both of you, that you'll certainly come and follow me to the grave.' A silence followed. The disappointment of both the sons was evident. They had hoped, the younger remarked, that she might have had something else to say. No, she had not, she answered. Where would be the good of that ? They had written to her often enough about that. And then she went on to repeat her request. There was nothing she would not do for them—nothing, if they would but promise to come. ' So be it,' replied the elder; 'but then you must make me a promise, mother, in your turn.'—' It isn't the land ?' she inquired, with bumble hesitation ; 'I should be agreeable to that.'—' No, God forbid ! What you have to promise me is that, if I come to your funeral, you will make such a will that not one acre of the land or one shilling you possess shall ever come to me ermine.'—' And,' said the other promptly, I make the same promise on the same condition.' Then there was another pause, deeper and more intense than the first. The old mother's face passed through many changes, always with an air of cogi- tation and trouble ; and the old sons watched her in such a suspense of all movement that it seemed as if they scarcely breathed. You sent your cards in.' she said, as if with sudden recollection. to remind me that you'd kept your father's name ?'—' Nothing will ever induce either of us to change it,' was the answer.—' e very hard upon me, son Dan'el,' she said, at last ; for you know you was always my favourite son,'—a touching thing to say to such an old man; but there was no reply. 'And I never took any pride in Peter,' she continued ; 'he was that undutiful; and his grandson's a mere child.' Still no reply. '1 was in hopes, if I could get speech of you. I should find you'd got reasonable with age, Dan'el, for God knows you was as innocent of it as the babe unborn.' Old Daniel Mortimer sighed deeply. They had been parted nearly sixty years, but their last words and their first words had been on the same subject, and it was as fresh in the minds of both as if only a few days had intervened between them. Still it seemed he could find nothing to say, and she, rousing up, cried out passionately, 'Would you have me denounce my own flesh and blood ?'— ‘No,madam, no,' answered the younger. She noticed the different appel- lation instantly, and turning on him said, with vigour and asperity, 'And you, Augustus, that I hear is rich, and has settled all your daughters well, and got a son of your own, you might know a parent's feelings. It's ill done of you to encourage Dan'el in his obstinacy.' Then, seeing that her words did not produce the slightest effect, she threw her lace apron over her bead, and pressing her wrinkled hands against her face, gave way to silent tears. 'I'm a poor, miserable old woman,' she presently cried, 'and if there's to be nobody but that child and the tenants to follow me to the grave, it'll be the death of me to know it, I'm sure it will.' With an air of indescribable depression, the elder son then re- peated the same promise he had given before, and added the same con- dition. The younger followed his example, and thereupon humbly taking down the lace apron from her face, and mechanically smoothing it over her aged knees, she gave the promise required of her, and placed her hand on a Prayer-book which was lying on the small table beside her, as if to add emphasis and solemnity to her words."
Let Miss Ingelow throw her theories to the winds, study to be simple and true to her instincts, and she may perhaps even yet show the novelists the better way.
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