NOVELS OF THE WEEK.*
THE interesting task which Mr. Anthony Hope has set him- self in The King's Mirror, and has executed with a full measure of his address and insight, removes his new work to a considerable extent from the category of those mock-Royal romances in which his most popular successes have been achieved. For although the scene is once more laid in an imaginary German Court, and the tlranmtis pt.sonm are with few exceptions of Royal or noble blood, this autobiography of a Sovereign relies less upon the fantastic and adventurous element, is more closely concerned with character analysis than with incident,—in a word, diverges far less freely from the possibilities of actual modern kingship than do the annals of Ruritania. The notion of illustrating the conflict between character and circumstance, between inclination and environ- ment, in the person of a modern Sovereign is not, altogether new in contemporary fiction. Some of our readers may remember that remarkably vivid story, Majesty, by the Dutch author Couperus, of which Mr. Fisher Unwin published a translation four or five years ago. But Majesty was obviously a roman it clef, though written with a freedom from animosity and a sympathy that went far to reconcile the reader to that dis- putable method of procedure, and the helplessness of the central figure lent the whole story a poignancy which is absent from Mr. Hope's narrative. The King's Mirror is not a tragedy, hardly a tragi-comedy, so interested is the central figure in the process of self-revelation, so humorously conscious of the irony of his fate. Augustin of Forstadt is a boy-King, crowned from the nursery, and the narrative relates his successive emancipation from the rigid tutelage of his governess, from the jealous, though devoted, supervision of his mother, from the iron guidance of his Prime Minister, and from the silken fetters of the beautiful Countess von Sempach. At twenty we find him determined to reign alone, but though always jealous of appearing to be under any influence, the medivalism of his training, and, above all, the precepts of his late adviser Hammerfeldt, assert themselves in the long run over the caprice of the moment. He conquers his passion for the Countess, and finally makes the mariage de convenance with the young Duchess of Bartenstein planned by his mother when his destined bride was in pinafores. It is impossible to feel very sorry for Augustin, for the reason already given; indeed, our sympathies go out quite as freely to his impulsive sister Victoria—whose sudden but transitory outburst of revolt on the eve of her betrothal to a stodgy German Princeling forms one of .the most striking scenes in the story—or to the fascinating Countess, whose butterfly wings are badly burnt in the Royal flame. Bnt if the King is not exactly loveable, he is an engaging and interesting personage, epithets that can be applied without reserve to the book as a whole. Mr. Hope has never given more sustained proof of his cleverness than in The King's Mirror. At the close of the episode of the Countess, which occurs before the middle of the volume, we feared that the remainder of the story must inevitably prove an anti- climax. But our apprehensions were speedily relieved by the admirable imbroglio which results in the secret duel between the King and Wetter, the political journalist, and by the entertaining comedy of the King's premeditated court- ship. In fine, there are no signs of fatigue or perfunctory workmanship in Mr. Hope's latest novel. In elegance, delicacy, and tact it ranks with the best of his previous novels, while in the wide range of its portraiture and the subtlety of its analysis it surpasses all his earlier ventures.
No one but a Frenchman would have bad the cleverness to weave romance out of such apparently prosaic materials as are afforded by the mania of stamp-collecting, but MM. Beau- regard and Gorsse in The Stamp King have succeeded in giving us a most diverting extravaganza, rather in the style of Jules Verne. The plot grows out of the philatelic rivalry between an American millionaire and millionairess, who • (1.) The King's Mirror. By Anthony Hope. London : Methuen and Co. [Gs.]—(2.) The Stamp King. By G. de Beauregard and H. de Gorsse. Trans- bard from the French by Miss Edith C. Phillips. London : Stanley Gibbous. [Gs.]—(3.) Nell Greyn's Diamond. By 1. Hooper. London : A. and C. Black. [6s.]—(4.) The Little Novice. By Allx King. London : Cassell and Co. [66]—(5.) A Name to Conjure with. By John Strange Winter. London : F. V. White and Co. (6s.]—(6.) The Sword of Fate. By Henry Herman. London : Greening and Co. [3s. 6d.]—(7.) Builders of the Waste. By Thorpe Forrest London : Duckworth and Co. [3s. 6d.]—(8.) Belting the Cat. By Herrington Fibrin]. London : F. V. White and Co. [Gs.]—(ti.) The History of a Kiss : as Told to ana Reported by Andrew Reid Cowan. London : T. Fisher Cowin. [5s.] — r 10.1 Tor I:. uce of Nun's 1/o:lolv. " itiette." Lumina : Dlgby, Long, aind Co. (3s. 6d.] travel to Europe to secure a unique stamp issued by the Maharajah of Brahmapootra. The millionaire, William Keniss, has a devoted valet, while his fair competitor, Miss Betty Scott, is attended by her faithful maid, Victoria Crockett.—we may observe parenthetically that the nomen- clature of the book is a constant joy to the reader : the "Honourable Tilmarnock- " is a worthy pendant to Daudet's " Lord Peambock." Of course maid and valet are in love with each other, and this fact, coupled with their official antagonism, immensely complicates the cross-purposes in which master and mistress are involved. Then we have for villain a Protean rascal—a most engaging scoundrel— who masquerades under a variety of sonorous aliases : Sir Oscar Tilbury, Commander Spartivento, Count Orsikoff, and High Admiral Campanas y Banastero. The whole story is such an excellent tissue of ingenious absurdity—some of the situations, however, are quite thrilling—that we can readily forgive one or two acid allusions to England and the English in which the authors indulge. The apology of the translator for the lack of verisimilitude in the last scene is entirely unnecessary. Otherwise she has done her work with credit, while M. Vuilliemin's spirited illustrations heighten the attractions of a most entertaining and ingenious story.
Mr. Hooper reverts in his new novel to the century—the seventeenth—in which the scene of his first novel was laid. But whereas in His Croce o' the Online incident by no means overshadowed characterisation, in Sell rai'n's Diamond adventure follows so hard on the heels of adventure as to render analysis almost impossible. The hero of the story, Mr. Aysgarth, is a young gallant imprisoned in Newgate for killing a nobleman in a somewhat irregular duel. After languishing in prison for two years, he accepts an offer of release conditional on his consent to act as decoy for the capture of a gentleman suspected of high treason. That at least is what it comes to, though Aysgartb, weakened by im- prisonment, fever, and torture, allows himself to be per- suaded that nothing dishonourable is expected of him. In the issue the suspect is caught, but Aysgarth's share in the business earns him the hatred and loathing of the girl to whom he has lost his heart and plighted his troth. To redeem his credit he has to procure the King's pardon for the victim, and to achieve that end recovers the famous jewel stolen from the King's mistress. The pursuit of the missing diamond lands him in a series of perilous adventures on sea and land, in which Mr. Hooper emulates the inventiveness of the most approved modern literary thaumaturgists. Indeed the whole episode at the convent, where, after assisting in an elopement of one of the nuns, he charges the father confessor with robbery, is poisoned by the Mother Superior, recovers when buried alive, and is rescued by the ready wit of the repentant poisoner, is on a par with the wildest flights of the intrepid Mr. Boothby. To speak frankly, Mr. Hooper's venture, though a spirited tour de force, occasionally borders on the grotesque, and is hardly I epresentative of the thought- ful and sympathetic talent displayed in his earlier novels.
The Little Novice opens promisingly with a picture of con- vent life in Paris, and the arrival of two Anglo-Indian children commended by their frivolous mother to the charge of a friend who had buried the secret of her unrequited love in the cloister. But the plot works out on lines that are partly painful, mainly unconvincing. The attractive girl dies miserably in circumstances which induce her sister to become a lady doctor, and the rest of the book is occupied with her relations with her colleague and partner, Dr. Paul Gervais, whom she ultimately marries. It is, in short, the already old problem story of the emancipated woman who finds Nature too strong for her. One can respect the motives of
the author and admire the tone of her work without admit- ting (1) that she has achieved an artistic success.
A .N.a me to Conjure with shows a marked improvement on " John Strange Winter's " usual work. In the first place, there are no officers in the book ; in the second, this is a serious study of life, not an account of the afternoon tea drinkings of the middle classes. For heroine we have Mrs. Lessingham, a female novelist whose books set the Thames on fire. In the heyday of her fame, with her husband (who acts as her business manager) and children dependent on her, she is conscious of failing powers, but accidentally discovers that she can still write when fortified by a tiny glass of green
Chartreuse. This is, of course, the beginning of the end, and the struggles of the unfortunate authoress, and her constant lapses in the effort to keep pace with her literary engage- ments, are most carefully and forcibly described. The subject is unpleasant and the treatment not exactly distinguished, but the book has interest and a strength rarely encountered in this author's work.
Mr. Herman has given us rather a good murder story in The Sword of Fate. In reality the murder is no murder at all, as no one wants to kill the victim, who—having heart-disease —dies of sudden fright. But as the body is thrust down an old mine, and the only person who could have had an interest in the death is in the immediate neighbourhood, the affair is treated as a crime, and the narrative assumes the character of the usual detective story, with a special colour derived from financial villainy connected with mines.
Builders of the Waste is a well-written story of England in the sixth century. The workmanship gives token of careful re- search into the history of that remote period, and the book gives a vivid general impression of the forest-clad England of the day ; indeed, the scenery, which is excellently realised and depicted, is quite the best feature of the book, the character; as is almost inevitable in the delineation of a period so far removed, avoiding the pitfall of modernity at the expense of vitality.
The plot of Belling the Cat is childishly ridiculous, but the liveliness of the narrative almost redeems its absurdity. Indeed, if one could bring oneself to acquiesce in the conduct of the characters, the book would be almost interesting.
The great advantage of the " oblique " method of narra- tion adopted in The History of a Kiss—the reporting of a story given to the author by a friend—is that the author can praise his own plot in the first chapter as really one of the most strange and remarkable things that ever happened. But it is rather a stale device, and if the reader is inclined to take the statement literally, we fear he will be woefully dis- appointed.
Of The Romance of Nun's Hollow we can find nothing more to say than that it is mostly about Ireland, and, while well- meaning and innocuous, is quite devoid of character or colour.
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