A ROMANCE OF THE SOCIAL PROBLEM.* Ma. BESA.NT does not
belong to any school or class of novelists; he is unique. If there be persons who do not care about his works, who even cannot read them, those persons will be found among the empty-headed, the cold-hearted, and the vulgar-minded, with all .those to whom his purity would be mawkish, and his "deep-veined humanity" unintelligible. He cannot possibly attract the Mrs. Wititterly class, for the gilded saloons are not bidden to unclose their " portals " to him, nor do the Algys, the Montys, and the Berties fill his wholesome pages with their fashionable foolish- ness; while, as he carries no poison of asps under his tongue, and provides no thin ice for the feet of the unwary, he has equally little charm for the more vicious than vacuous kind of novel-readers. It is, then, pleasant to know that the popularity of Mr. Besant is wide, and that its ex- tensive circulation in the pages of a largely-read magazine did not interfere with his new novel's attaining a second edition within a few days after publication. This is a good thing, not only, and not so much, on the author's account, as because it speaks well for the public taste and right-mindedness.
Children of Gibeon is a realistic romance, with baton for its scene, workgirls for its chief personages, many features akin to those of the author's recent works, and a motive, similar to theirs, originating in the strength of Mr. Besant's convictions and the keenness of his feelings. Its realism and its romance are por- trayed in a way which is entirely the author's own; no one else sees such people as he shows us, as he sees them ; no one else sets fancy to do such feats, so quaint and daring, so original, and yet so heart-and-homely, so wild and common-sensical. In the latter respect he is especially remarkable. The creations of his fancy whom he intends to be romantic, out of bounds, wholly unusual, exceptional among their fellows, are, indeed, all these ; but, their bent given, their course indicated, they follow the one and persevere in the other with entire simplicity and reasonableness.
That the Angela of All Sorts and Conditions of Men should have done what she did for the sake of the unknown world of Stepney and Bethnal Green, is as wild a fancy as ever a novelist entertained ; but, having done this thing, what a perfectly prac- tical, reasonable, and business-like Angela the brewer's heiress is. To that wild fancy East London will owe its People's Palace, a lasting monument to the wise and impartial exponent of the working people to many hearers who would never learn anything about them in any other way ; and those hearers will owe a great enlightenment, with its penalty of responsibility if they do not carry that light into the dark places which have been pointed out to them. For, such works as All Sorts and Conditions of Men and Children of Gibeon, realistic romances of the Social Problem, dramas in action of the life of the suffer- ing multitude, aids toward the reading of the great enigma, although helpful, hopeful, even humorous, are yet profoundly serious and inevitably sad. These books would oblige the most thoughtless to think, were they but capable of being induced to read them by the originality of the author's conceits, and the singular, not easily definable charm of his style. In his language there is a naturally pathetic quality, easy to trace to so close a familiarity with the writers of the Old Testament, that its effect produces itself unconsciously. In his humour there is a quaint gentleness singularly attractive; his satire is keen, but it is not bitter; his motives are always noble, practical, and plainly avowed. The present work demands consideration in a double character, at once as a feat of fancy of a most original kind, and as an exposition of the conditions of life, under which a large class among "the masses" exist, by a close and practised observer, who is neither an alarmist, a pessimist, nor a sentimentalist, but who knows there is that abroad which must "give us pause" as a nation sooner or later, and had better be helped to do so sooner.
• Children of Cibeon. By Walter Besant. London : Chatto and Windus.
The feat of fancy to which we owe Mr. Besant's curious variation on the old theme of the adoption and substitution of a child is supremely original, and so well worked out in all its parts and details, that when the reader pene- trates Lady Mildred's secret, and is no longer in any doubt as to whether it is Valentine or Violet who was Polly-which-is- Marla, the interest of the story does not flag in the least, while the skilfulness of its construction only then becomes duly apparent to the reader. The quaintness and oddity of the situation, the pretty imbroglios, and the faintly threatening dangers of the equivoque, just suffered to present themselves for graceful dispersion ; the simplicity of the means by which a design of the wildest improbability is carried out; the grace- fulness which even the most realistic portions of the story possess, demand recognition. Mr. Besant has not done anything more skilful, or more tasteful, than the tempering of the tragic element of his story by making Hester, the toiler whose daughter is perhaps Violet or perhaps Valentine, but certainly Polly-which- is-Marla, blind, before her convict-husband returns to blast his children's lives. Mr. Besant tells this part of the story with extraordinary effect and delicacy, showing us in Hester Monument one whose life of toil and privation has rendered the peace of an ahnshouse and the compulsory repose of blindness acceptable to her; while her affliction enables her real son and her supposed daughter to conceal the occurrence of the catastrophe which she had dreaded for years, and only ceased to dread just as it happened. There is not the least over-emphasis, there is not a hair's-breadth departure from the homely simplicity of Hester Monument, the woman who knows that no wickeder man than her husband ever lived, but cannot keep him out of her talk for all that ; but there is a subtly pathetic influence about the whole, something that deeply im- presses the reader, and relieves him when he finds that the blind woman will never know.
This novel is chiefly valuable, however, for its revelations of the life of those who live under what Mr. Besant quaintly describes as "the law of elevenpence-ha'penny ;" for its plain, impartial statement of a terrible case ; for its exposition of the consequences of the over-work, the under-payment, the
• chronic semi-starvation, the grinding oppression, that make up the " workgirl's " existence, with its queer social laws, its rude pride, its half-savage notions of liberty, cherished amid the hardest slavery—(for the workgirl has not the value of the "chattel" that used to be pleaded against a too ready belief in Legree in the days of Uncle Tom's Cabin)—its blank dis- regard of religion,—in short, its inhuman and unhuman con- ditions. The typical group of workgirls—one of them is the sister of Polly-which.is-Marla—is composed of three widely different individuals, but each of them lays hold on the reader with a striking reality; and the scene of the death of the girl whom the good angel, in the mortal guise of Valentine (she who may or may not be Polly-which-is-Marla), comes too late to save, is very fine indeed. The friendship that unites these girls, the true and urgent charity that inflames the heart of Melenda Monument, making her redouble her slavery that the feeble one may not lack the wretched bread and cold tea on which the button-hole hands subsist, the wild, fierce temper, the rugged pride, and poor mock independence, so easily broken down by the ever-at-hand weapon of dismissal, or the slow torture of " drilling " (a process of which we trust the public will insist upon hearing more), and the genuine girlishness underlying it all,—these are set forth with stringent reality, without a flaw of affectation, exaggeration, or false sentiment.
The book is not one to make its readers happier, although it ends well as a story. It is too true and too terribly suggestive to be read with seriousness, which the writer invites, unless accompanied by both sadness and fear, awakened by the know- ledge that such awful wrong and evil exist, and that there is apparently no sure way of repairing or mitigating them. The most striking character in the story is that of Melenda, the typical workgirl, who keeps herself respectable through all the misery of her slavish life, but whose nature is embittered, and her existence deprived of every gleam of enjoyment and femi- nine grace. In that queer hierarchy, whose grades are the young lady, the young person, and the mere workgirl, this proud and passionate button-hole worker occupies the lowest rank, sees and suffers all the wretchedness of her own condition and sur- roundings, and becomes the special object of the care of her prosperous brother Claude—so called by his burglarious father in honour of the famous highwayman Claude Duval—and Valentine, who may or may not prove to be Polly-which-it- Marla, but is the good angel of the Horton workgirls in the meantime. As Mr. Besant never lays bare a social wound merely to lecture upon it and declare it incurable, his readers look confidently for his counsel in this case, which he exposes with such terrible force. It is not hopeless, he says, it is not incurable ; and he makes Valentine talk to the dying girl, beaten in the fearful struggle, dragged out of the trampling crowd too late, of a divine future, in which the women who. work, the lowest and the poorest, such as Lotty and Melenda and Liz had been, shall work in happiness, not in misery, for a wage which will keep them in comfort, and for hours which will give them leisure ; when there shall be no drilling and driving, and swearing and abusing,—called, euphonically," language" at Hoxton :—
"My dear,' said Valentine, remember that the time must come. Perhaps we shall not see it, but let us help its coming while we live. The future belongs to those who work. But the girls cannot do much by themselves; they mast have two things,—the help of the
working men, and that of the women who do not work We will start our co-operative work here, Melenda. You shall be the fore- woman, when you have learned a little more When we are quite ready with oar workshop and our girls, we shall go to the ladies, and tell them what we are going to do, and ask them if they will come to us instead of going to the shop; and perhaps the shops will come to us instead of going to the factory. There must be some sympathy, somewhere in the world.' The Doctrine of Co- operation was difficult for Melenda to grasp She only understood, of work, that it must be 'given out' in the usual manner and by the customary machinery of clerks. There are many points of dis- tinction between the masculine and the feminine mind : as that the woman is not happy unless she is quite sure and certain, and that the man gets along very comfortably under a sense of uncer- tainty; also that any man who disagrees with a woman is, to her, an utterly contemptible person, while to a man, he is only a person with a curious mental twist. But the most distinctive of all these points is, that a woman never invents anything, or wants to change anything, or to improve any methods or ways of
doing anything Melenda, therefore, could not at first under- stand how the Golden Age may be restored. Few, indeed, are those whose imaginations can overstep the bounds of custom, and sally forth into the world where women are actually paid for labour, at a price which is not ruled by competition. In that world, if work is slack, there will be savings to fall back upon ; there shall be no grinders and drivers, and no woman shall undersell another. In that world will spring spontaneously all those beautiful virtues, which can only flourish in physical comfort, sufficiency of food, and freedom from anxiety. And in that world the girls will refuse to marry early, and the men will not ask them. But they will always try to beat us down,' said Melenda, incredulous of any Golden Age."
Mr. Besant's readers will also be incredulous, and Mr. Besant himself does not believe in such a world as he depicts—much ; but his revelation of the workgirls' world as it is, made in a form at once solemn, suggestive, and highly attractive, must do something,—there must, as he says, be "some sympathy, somewhere in the world." And we may hope that it will be aroused in those to whom the author addresses several plain sayings,—the women who do not work, but whose ignorant and unthinking eagerness to get everything they want or fancy at the lowest possible price, is largely accountable for the sufferings of their sister-women who are condemned to live under "the law of elevenpence-ha'penny."
Special mention is due to a picture of Hoxton, worthy of Dickens in minuteness, vividness, and quaint characterisation, to the story of Hester Monument's convict-husband, Mr.
James Carey, and his serio-comic boastings, and also to the pathetic episode of the ruined clergyman who lives upon his dream of great preferment in the swanning house, while his daughter slaves in the upper room, until the tragic end of the lives of the tempter and the tempted. In one sense, what is fiction in the work forms the least portion of its value ; but Children of Gibson, the novel, is as well entitled to praise as the something far more which it gives to the world is entitled to a.
better and more heartfelt testimony.
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