THREE LADIES' NOVELS.* THE author of The House on the
Marsh, has undoubtedly established her claim to be considered one of the first of the school of fiction to which it belongs, and which depends for its interest solely on a startling and skilfully worked-up plot. That story revealed a fancy which positively revelled in threading the mazes of crime, mystery, and detection. But there is a great difference between revelling and rioting in such plot,âall the difference, in fact, that exists between moderation and excess in legitimate art. Such is the difference between The House on the Marsh and A Prince of Darkness. It was hardly possible not to have a kind of sneaking liking for the hero-villain of Miss Warden's earlier story. He behaved very badly to his wife in seeking to kill her by inches ; and he had, of course, no right to make love as he did to the pretty, simple governess. But there was an air of Claude Duval about the scoundrel who played the roles of country gentleman, philanthropist, robber of country-houses, and skilled musician ; and there was genuine humour in the fictions he palmed off on the poor governess. But Louis de Bretenil, alias Mr. Beresford, alias the Honourable Mr. Corrie, who, in A Prince of Darkness, takes the place of Mr. Rayner in The House on the Marsh, has none of the pseudo-virtues or even of the " redeeming " vices of his predecessor. He is nothing but a selfish, sensual brute, saved only by his ingenuity from being commonplace. He commits murder after murder simply to obtain money. If Mr. Rayner is a Claude Duval, De Breteuil is a Bill Sikes in broadcloth. Here is a glimpse of him when he is brought face to face with the woman whose life he has done his worst to spoil, and who pitilessly hunts him down. " Glaring at her out of the darkness, with livid face and burn- ing eyes, his blue lips shaking with diabolical anger, and his white teeth shining like those of a beast of prey, was Louis de Bretenil. Branded with every foulest crime, bearing on his savage and distorted face the impress of every passion that can harden and degrade, the sight of what he had become for a moment froze the blood of the woman who had once adored him." Here Miss Warden's too Corinthian style for once is not unjust to her subject. At the same time, much skill is displayed in the planning of their crimes by Louis de Bretenil and his accomplice, Smith. Their disguises are well managed, and their expedients, from the chloroforming of passengers in railway trains to the setting of dogs upon travellers on high roads, are innumerable and ingenious. Till the very last, too, even the practised unraveller of tangled plots will probably fail to
* A Prince of Darkness. By Florence Warden. 3 vols. London : Ward and Downey. 1845.âSiateraâ˘in-Laic. By Lady Margaret Majendie. 3 vols. London : Bentley and Son. 1885.âStegne silts ; or, Fated Fortunes. By Helene E. A. Gingold. S vole. London : Remington and Co. 1885.
hit upon the mainspring of the whole story,âthe fact that the two villains exchange roles as circumstances demand. There is in The Prince of Darkness a lack of good characters to relieve the plot. Gerald Staunton, who is an agent in avenging the murder of his father, but who marries the daughter of the murderer, is the best in the book ; but even his portrait is essentially a vignette. Miss Warden struggles hard to make a success of Madeline de Lancry, who at one time was the wife of Louis de Bretenil ; and there is a certain amount of statuesque grandeur about her. But there is also a harshness in her com- position which has a disfiguring, distorting effect.
To turn from A Prince of Darkness to Sisters-in-Law is like exchanging a slum reeking with stale brandy for a lawn con- gregated with pretty, animated, and not too self-conscious girls. The one is all action ; the other is all, or very nearly all, chatter. There is in Sisters-in-Law no plot to speak of, and there are no more sensational incidents than an attempt on the part of a farmer to shoot himself when mad with drink and debt; and a shipwreck, in which, however, the best of young men is not drowned. Lady Margaret Majendie is quite in her element in Sisters-in-Law, however ; and to say the least, there is an air of reality about her Gardas, and Lilies, and Berthas, and Letties, who think a great deal about their lovers, and just a little about their gowns; and about her Jacks, and Carls, and Duvals, who have their misunderstandings, and think poverty " horrid," but, after all, do nothing worse than "scent the night air with fragrant cigars." There is, perhaps, a little too muchâthere is as a matter of fact very little else in these three volumesâof girls kissing and crying, and of such talk as "I don't know what the world is coming to, when girls wear satin gowns. When I was young, I wore ball-gowns of white muslin with tucks and sashes, and they were washed again and again."â" That was a long time ago, Aunt Jane." â" Yes, but as the world gets older, it gets sillier. Garda's gown can't have cost a sixpence less than five-and-twenty pounds."â" Oh, no ! Amelie made it."â" Why is she always different from the others ? Gwendo and Lily look very nice in tulle." Bat tastes differ ; and it may at least be said that the talk of Lady Margaret Majendie's young people âit is a pity, perhaps, they are not confronted with some genuine misfortunes, instead of merely bric-a-brac onesâis perfectly harmless. Lady Margaret Majendie seems to us rather an amateur photographer in fiction than a serious artist. But there are worse ways of killing the time, even in literature, than playing at social photography.
The author of Steyneville, whose name is unfamiliar to us, deserves a word of encouragement. She has written a historical novel, which recalls the style, not to speak of the period, of Esmond. There is a reckless, unbelieving, generous peer in it, Lord Alingdale, who in many respects recalls Lord Castle- wood, and Harold Steyneville's relations to him are those of Harry Esmond to his patron Almyra Marlande, too, the capricious, ill-brought-up beauty and heroine, is such another as Beatrix Castlewood, although she also reminds one of Edith Dombey, especially in her style of elopement. But it is quite possible that these resemblances are essentially acci- dental ; in any case, the author of Steyneville is no slavish imitator of any one. She does her best, and with by no means inconsiderable success, to reproduce the curious Franco-English life of a by no means remote past. She, indeed, crowds her canvas too much ; her plot is a little confused ; her moralising is poor, and her sarcasm is worse than her moralising. It is a blander, also, to make the counter- part of Lord Castlewood degenerate into a drunkard ; and it is poor schoolboyishârather than schoolgirlishâfun to speak of "men of the genus acquaintanus influentialis." But there are some well-drawn charactersâthe atheist lord already mentioned ; Harold Steyneville, the hero of the story, who is rather a lad of family than of fortune ; his half-brother, De Crespigny; and Annie Marlande, the sister of the unfortunate Almyra. Probably the author of Steyneville has made a mistake in trying what, for aught we know to the contrary, is her 'prentice hand on a historical fiction. With care she ought to write a goodâprovided it be not too involvedâstory of to-day.
Previous page
