RECENT NOVELS.*
Miss ADELINE SERGEANT'S new novel, Seventy Times Sever, is a very beautiful, powerful, and pathetic story, the general effect of which we can best briefly describe by saying that the • (L) Seventy Times Seven. By Adeline Sergeant. 3 vols. Edinburgh : Oliphant. Anderson, and Ferrier.—(2.) Diana Barrington a Romance of Central India. By Mrs. John Croker. 3 vols. London: Ward and Downey.— (3.) The Third Mies St. Quentin. Be Ere. Moleaworth. London : Efatcnards. (4.) Helen. the Novelist. By J. W. Shover. C.S.I. 2 vols. London Chap- man and Hall.—(5.) Fraternity a Romance. 2 vols. London: Macmillan and Co.—(6.) Mine Own Familiar Friend. By the Author of "The Golden Milestone." London: Digby and Long. book has reminded us very frequently of one or two of the best novels of Miss Jessie Fothergill. We do not mean that the new story is at all imitative, or that we can lay our finger here and there upon special parallelisms or reminders ; but that the general handling, especially the conception and grouping of character, does undoubtedly recall the total impression left by such books as Probation and Kith and Kin, though in intensity of passionate imagination Seventy Times .Seven must certainly take rank below the last-named story, —one of the most impressive novels that has been written since the days of Charlotte and Emily Bronte. If we attempted to analyse this vague feeling of resemblance, we should probably find its raison d'être in the character of the hero, Max Brendon, and in the nature of his relations with the heroine, Magdalen Lingard. We do not mean to depreciate, but only to define the former creation, when • we say that Max represents a type of masculine character specially favoured by feminine novelists. He is pre-eminently a strong man—strong in principle and strong in will—with the vein of tender- ness which often, though by no means always, softens and humanises the hardness of conscious strength, and transforms into pity the instinctive contempt for weakness. The natural reticence of such a nature is intensified by uncongenial surroundings, and by the pride, altogether un- mixed with vanity, which forbids him to show the best side of himself, and prompts him to exaggerate rather than to minimise that brusquerie of manner which grows upon men and women who live a self-contained life. Max is thrown upon himself by his nature and his environment ; Magdalen has been thrown upon herself by the discovery that the man to whom she had given her love, and who constituted her world, was altogether unworthy of her ; in both, the instinct -of repression is strong ; but the natural affinity is stronger still, and the story of their gradual approach to each other is told with a fine exquisiteness of imaginative realisation. Equally successful as a piece of character delineation is the portrait of Max Brendon's elder brother, Cecil, one of those weak, fluidly selfish persons who drift into follies which bring about more widespread misery than can be produced even by the deliberate wickedness of such a man as Captain Esher, oneof the most cold-bloodedly diabolical villains of recent fiction. It would perhaps be incorrect to say that Cecil is truer to life than Max, .but he certainly represents a more familiar type of character. In his indeterminate, shilly-shallying sort of way, he is as much in love with Lenore Chaloner as it is possible for him to be with any one but himself, and yet he allows himself to drift into an engagement with the undesirable Ruby Roslyn. With characteristic weakness, he leaves his father and brother to rescue him from his entanglement, and yet, when he has secured all the possible outward means to happiness, nothing will content the poor human moth but to flutter around the flame by which he has been so badly singed, with results that are disastrous to all the victims of his -folly, and to one of them fatal. The reference of the title is doubtless to Lenore's final reconciliation with her erring husband; but the lives of Ruby Roslyn and of poor James Lloyd, who loves her in spite of her cruel unfaithfulness, and even stains his soul with the guilt of attempted murder for the sake of the girl who has deserted him for a richer lover, are made to serve as very beautiful and. natural illustrations of the law of divine forgiveness. Some of the single chapters in the third volume are specially rich in simple, unforced pathos ; but, indeed, Seventy Times Seven is from first to last a beautiful and satisfying story.
Diana Barrington is not a book which lends itself to elaborate criticism, for Mrs. Croker is one of those old- fashioned novelists whose sole aim is the production of a story with sufficient variety of character and stir of incident to give the reader what our American friends call "a good time," without putting an undue strain—or, indeed, any strain at all —upon his mental powers. In this modest endeavour she has achieved a considerable amount of success, for Diana Barring- ton is a bright and interesting novel, which will be found very enjoyable by those of us who are still simple-minded enough to enjoy a story which is a story and nothing more. All novels of Anglo-Indian life have a strong family likeness to each other, and as Mrs. Croker displays no ambition to discover novel motives, she is all the more to be congratulated -upon the freshness with which she utilises very familiar material We have the Aittrigaes, the old scandal-
mongering and mischief-making, the old joke about the objectionable young lady whose Christian name is Louisa, and who is generally known as "unlimited Loo," and even that old, old buried treasure which figures in every Indian story which we have read for the past thirty years. In justice to Mrs. Croker, it must be said that she dis- plays no interest in this antiquated and ricketty piece of machinery, but introduces it in the most perfunctory manner, as if she had said to herself,—' Every one has a buried treasure, and so I suppose I must have one too ; but I will drag it into the story and drag it out again as speedily as may be.' The wonderful diamond necklace, which does not form a part of the treasure, is, however, a very important " property " both in the ordinary and technical sense of the word; and the story of poor Diana's folly in pawning the ornament, without her husband's knowledge, to save her utterly heartless and worthless mother from ruin, is conceived with considerable ingenuity and told with real vigour. In character-sketching of a somewhat external character, Mrs. Croker has a hand which is at once light and firm ; and if the notabilities of Gurrumpore—especially the feminine notabilities—are for the most part exceedingly objectionable people, they are, at any rate, very much alive. The author's principal mistake has been the adoption of the autobiographical form of narrative. The difficulties of telling in this form a story with many characters and complicated action are always great, though there are cases in which it is worth while to grapple with them for the sake of some effect of reality otherwise unattain- able; but this is not one of such cases, and Mrs. Croker would have told her tale more easily, and more effectively as well, if she had told it in the third instead of in the first person. Still, in spite of all its faults, and it is by no means faultless, Diana Barrington is a very clever and interesting novel.
In The Third Miss St. Quentin Mrs. Molesworth does not write for her favourite audience of children, though she links her present with her past work by providing for her adult readers a contemporary version of the old Mu-eery story of Cinderella. Some years ago we had a similar adiptation, on a smaller scale, from the delightful pen of Miss Thackeray ; and those who are curious in such things may find it interesting to indulge in a critical comparison between the two modern settings of the ancient gem of legend. We, however, are quite content to enjoy one good thing without a sidelong glance at another good thing, and the enjoyable quality of The Third Miss St. Quentin is one of those things "which nobody can deny." Mrs. Molesworth's adherence to the main structural lines of her classic original is characterised by as much fidelity as the prosaic conditions of real life will allow. Of course, the godmother has lost her supernatural powers, and the pumpkin coach, its rat horses, and mice footmen, are ex- changed for more familiar modern representatives, while the Prince is only a very charming young English baronet ; but so long as we have the elder sisters, and the ball, and the 12 o'clock departure, and the loss of the slipper, and the finding of the slipper, and the happy marriage of the Prince and Cinderella, what more do we want? In one matter only is there a serious modification of the old story. The two elder sisters are not step-sisters, but only half-sisters, for Madeline, Ermine, and Ella have all one father, and instead of being hatefully imainiable creatures, the daughters of the first Mrs. St. Quentin are good, affectionate girls, who honestly wish to make Ella happy by doing what they are sure will be in the end best for her. Unfortunately, poor Madeline, who is at the head of her father's household, is troubled with that combina- tion of fastidious conscientiousness and want of tact which is not unusual in earnest young people who are placed in positions of responsibility. Had she trusted to her natural instincts of love and sympathy, all would have been well ; but she con- sidered too curiously ; she was so afraid of being unwise, that her very fear betrayed her into practical unwisdom ; and if Ella's suspicions of Madeline were cruelly unjust, it can hardly be said that they were devoid of apparent foundation. At last, however, Ella's eyes are opened ; she wins at once her sister and her prince, and a very pretty story comes to an appropriately happy ending.
Do writers of fiction, as a rule, give titles to their stories before they are begun or after they are finished? This is a question which the uninitiated cannot answer save by a guess that the practice of our good friends, the tale-tellers, is by no
means uniform. In the particular case of Helen, the Novelist, we think there can be little doubt that the title came first, for though it may be appropriate to the novel which Mr. Sherer set out to write, it is by no means appropriate to the novel which he has actually written. In -the first volume, after the few early chapters in which Helen Clare is little more than introduced to us, she disappears altogether from the story ; and though in the second volume she takes a more pro- minent position, her novel-writing is a mere fact by the way, which takes no appreciable hold upon our interest, and is in no way connected with the action of the tale. For anything that we care about it, Helen might have been a painter, or a type-writer, or an actress, or a woman of independent means, or anything but a novelist ; and though this in itself is but a trifling matter, it seems to indicate that Mr. Sherer's invention is somewhat insufficiently under controL Indeed, in the story itself, by whatever name it may be called, there are numerous other indications of this weak. ness. We have seldom read a novel of equal literary skill— and the mere writing in Helen, the Novelist, is exceedingly good —so thoroughly scrappy and shambling in construction. The book really consists not of one story, but of three or four stories, which are tacked rather than welded together ; and though each story is interesting enough in itself, the book as a whole is sadly deficient in unity of effect and interest. For example, the Indian part of the first volume, which deals entirely with the adventures of the artist, Arthur Geneste, enables Mr. Sherer to utilise his special knowledge, and might have been made into a very good complete story, for there is plenty of clearly conceived character and brisk action ; but here it is simply an inartistically colossal episode, which throws the novel out of balance. Mr. Sherer tells ns that when his heroine began to write, she took "great pains to make the framework of her story definite and firm before she commenced to depict the different scenes and elaborate
the characters she perceived, and was able to preserve, the due proportion each part bore to the whole; and was assisted in maintaining that reserve and repose which are elements in artistic performance as essential as they are difficult." Helen's creator or biographer has hardly been so successful as Helen herself. He has achieved reserve and repose, but he has sadly neglected to make the framework of his story defudie and firm, and has certainly not preserved the due proportion of each part to the whole, the result .being that Helen, the Novelist, though an intelligent, and in many ways clever book, is a thing of shreds and patches.
The anonymous novel, Fraternity, can hardly be called a pretentious book, for it is written in a pleasantly simple style, altogether devoid of any evidence of striving after effect ; and yet, when we reach the close of the book, we have a feeling that the author's intention has been a great deal more magnifi- cent than his achievement. The novel is by no means easy to describe, for while it has been clearly written with an ethical as well as an artistic purpose, it is somewhat wanting in intellectual outline. It is easy to indicate the drift of a book written, say, in the interests of teetotalism or agnosticism, or any one of the cut-and-dried schemes of socialism ; but the author, or the hero through whom he speaks, is not a patentee of any new piece of intellectual or sociological machinery. Plans warranted to produce a uni- versal feeling of fraternity—" Morison's pills," as Carlyle would have called them—can be analysed and criticised; but analysis and criticism are both defied by advocacy of fraternity "in the aibstract." Of course, Edmund Haig's work among the Radical Welsh quarrymen, in convincing them that right can never be attained by a mere straggle for "rights," is concrete enough, and the teaching is bracing and healthy,— that is, we feel that we should call it bracing and healthy if we could define it with sufficient clearness to call it anything. The fact is, that Edmund Haig is a man who is guided by beautiful and winning impulses rather than by clear principles of action. He is really the son .of a wealthy Welshman of good family, but he is ignorant of his parentage, and is introduced to us as a village schoolmaster, of somewhat superior attainments to most men of his class, who has been engaged to give lessons to a young lady who lives in the immediate vicinity of his school. He learns to love his pupil, and has reason to believe that she has learned to love him ; but as soon as he makes this dis- covery he beats a precipitate retreat, on the ground that it would be wrong to ask her to share his poverty. We may on
plausible grounds either commend or condemn this line of action; but it is clearly impossible to reconcile it with Haig's doctrine of fraternity, which, rightly or wrongly, takes no account of differences in social or pecuniary position, and the passage in which he attempts to vindicate his consistency is certainly weak. Apart from this intellectual indeterminate- ness, Fraternity is a really good book, as interesting in story as it is elevated in tone. The writing is excellent throughout; the character-painting, if a little slight, is never careless, and some of the descriptions of Welsh scenery are very fine. The novels that we have any wish to read twice are rather rare, and Mine Own Familiar Friend is not among them ; but it may be read once with a good deal of pleasure, for the author has invented an interesting and shapely story, which he tells in a style which, though it possesses no special distinction, is very bright and easy. The central figure, Lord Manorbier, is a young Peer who, when little more than a boy, has been entrapped into marriage with an actress of the lowest type, from whom he has obtained a separation. He spends his time in travelling about, and at the opening of the story we find him at Sandcliff, a little watering-place on the South Coast. Here, under his family name of Cecil Conway, which he adopts during his peregrinations, he is introduced to Florence Hillier, the Vicar's daughter ; and though the dearer her society becomes to him, the more strongly he feels the necessity of tearing himself away, he cannot summon up resolution for a farewell which he knows must or ought to be final. While he is procrastinating, his wife appears upon the scene, makes her way into Mr. Hillier's house, and forces her husband, in the presence of the Vicar and his daughter, to acknowledge the relationship he has hitherto concealed. The ill-matched pair part in anger, and the next morning the unhappy woman is found dead at the foot of a high cliff, from which she has evi- dently either fallen or been thrown. The coroner's jury return an open verdict ; but in the eyes of the public, Lord Manorbier rests under a black cloud of suspicion, and is practically an outcast from society. With broken spirit, he. retires to his estate, from which he has been for many years an absentee, determined not to rest until he has unravelled the mystery of his wife's death, and made himself worthy to ask the hand of Florence. To say what difficulties he encountered, what allies aided and what enemies hindered him, and what measure of success he finally attained, would be to make an unfair revela- tion; so we will content ourselves- with commending Mine Own Familiar Friend to all who can enjoy a bright, pleasant tale, and who are all the better pleased if such a tale can be told in one volume instead of being spread laboriously over three. Our only serious objection to the general scheme of the book is based on the difficulty of believing that a man such as Lord Manorbier shows himself to be, should ever have been attracted by the vulgar, meretricious charms of a girl like Lottie de Vere.
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