RECENT NOVELS.*
IT is clear that by the death of Mrs. Beckett—for Carinthia Marazion has the melancholy interest attaching to a posthu- mous work—we have lost avery strong, capable, and thoughtful novelist. While the mere story has sufficient interest to attract the devotees of "light reading," the study of character and situation has an intellectual vitality calculated to attract other and more exacting readers,—those readers for whom fiction becomes most enjoyable when it adds to the interest of simple narrative the larger interest which belongs to the imaginative presentation of any problem of emotion or con- duct. The course of the lives of the three most prominent persons in the novel, is determined mainly by the degree of their loyalty to the principles which they profess, and secondarily by the manner in which that loyalty asserts itself in the presence of antagonism. It would be unfair to speak of so artistic a novel as Carinthia Marazion in a form of words which would be applicable to a treatise in the disguise of fiction; but, from one point of view, it may be described as a powerful narrative plea for two prin- ciples which, though intellectually harmonious, are often practically hostile,—fidelity to personal conviction, and genuine toleration for the personal convictions of others. Norton Lockyer is tolerant enough of opinions which are not his own, because those which are his own seem mere trifles when weighed against his personal advantage. Martin Heatley is faithful to the light which has been given him, and to him fidelity means a refusal to compromise with any alien thought. Corinthia is also faithful,—with the fidelity of martyrdom ; but to her the one thing demanding reverence is not objective certainty, which she believes unattainable, but the subjective certitude of the spirit ; and therefore she can extend to Heatley a toleration which he dare not allow to her. Lockyer's dastardly scheme to compel Corinthia, by an appeal to her conscience, to release him from the engagement he is too cowardly to break, is an expedient which is not only clever, but dramatically consistent. Not less skilful is the forging of the chain of incidents the last link of which is Corinthia's marriage to Heatley, the devout clergyman whose great love inspires the belief that his wife must in the end be converted from her scepticism to the faith which he holds with such intensity of conviction. One cannot escape from the impression that in writing Carinthia Marazion, Mrs. Beckett had a certain polemical inten- tion ; and if this be so, her polemics are less satis- factory than her art. If a contrast between Christianity and Agnosticism is to be controversially effective, the con- trasted types must both be the highest that can be found ; but though it may be regarded as certain that the author meant to be fair, few intelligent Christians of to-day would admit that their faith is fairly represented by Martin Heatley. He is only a weak edition of Mrs. Deland's John Ward ; and while effective as a portrait, he is as a controversial puppet, a failure. If, however, Carinthia Marazion is read without any arriere pensee, it will be found a really powerful and fascinating story.
Mr. F. W. Robinson's books are never lacking in either ability or interest. He has a good eye for character ; and the plot, which is generally an important feature in his novels, has always sufficient ingenuity and freshness to keep the attention alive. The virtues of his work are, never- theless, generally deprived of their full effectiveness by certain limitations ; and the latter are as discernible as the former in The Wrong that was Done. It is a novel which suffers, as only the work of a clever man can suffer, from that three-volume tradition for which we are asked to believe that nobody is responsible, and yet against which the protest of everybody is in vain. The faults of the book are so largely due to the necessity for artificial prolongation, that had there been only two volumes of it, the fault-finding critic would have been left with hardly anything to say. Mr. Robin- son is too well-practised a literary craftsman to give us those large patches of padding with which inferior novelists swell • (1.) Corinthia Marazion. By the late Cecil Griffith (Mrs. 8. Beckett). vols. London : Chat-to and Windas.—(2.) The Wrong that was Done. By F. W. Robinson. 3 vole. London : Hurst and Blackett.—(3.) Cut with His Oran Diamond. By Paul Cushing. 3 vole. Edinburgh and London: W. Blackwood and Sons.—(4.) Mammon. By Mrs. Alexander. 3 vols. London : W. Heine- mann.—(5.) A Baffling Quest. By Richard Dowling. 3 vols. London : Ward and Downey.—(8.) The Lady of Balmerino. By Marie Connor-Leighton. 3 vole. London : Trischler and Co.—(7.) A Romance of Modern London. By Curtis Yorke. 3 vols. London : F. V. White and Co.
out their narratives, but there is a general diffuseness, an elaboration of insignificant details of incident or conversation, which serves the fell purpose equally well. The main story has certainly the merit of originality. Deborah Reisdale has been brought up from infancy by her uncle, Simon Reisdale, and his wife, to whom she has been sent across the sea by Simon's younger brother Martin, who has long been a wanderer. When Martin returns to England, Simon is an old man and a widower, and Deborah, who has been to him as a daughter, is a girl on the verge of womanhood. Then comes the first great crisis of the story, for Martin, on hearing of his daughter, ex- presses only bewilderment, and on being shown the letter which has consigned the child to his brother's charge, at once declares it to be a forgery. The shock of the revelation is too much for poor old Simon, and after his death Deborah becomes a guest in the family of the wealthy Mr. James Dubberley,—a rather mysterious person, who is brother of the dead woman whom she has regarded as her aunt. Reisdale makes intermittent appearances, and Deborah is beginning to regard him with a new kind of interest, when she learns, first from Mr. Dubberley, and then from Martin himself, that her real father—a scoundrel named Sinclair—has met his death from Reisdale's hand. An additional twist is given to this complication by the reappearance of the man who is supposed to be dead; and the narrative is still further involved by a sub-story, in which the principal actors are Mr. Dubberley's daughter Miranda, and a rather stagey foreigner, Polydore de Lam, who turns out to be Deborah's brother. It will be seen that the structure of the novel is thoroughly melodramatic, but Mr. Robinson possesses literary and imaginative gifts which distinguish him from ordinary purveyors of melodrama.
There is plenty of cleverness in Cut with His Own Diamond,. and yet it irritates much more than it pleases. Indeed, people who read and judge with reflection must have noticed the fact,. that when they think of a work of fiction as mainly " clever," the thought is one that seldom carries with it unreserved eulogy. A novel, to be perfectly satisfying, must attract and. please us as a whole, and cleverness is almost always a virtue of parts. Ergo, it is a quality which is apt to make itself most noticeably manifest in books where the parts are, in effect, greater than the 'whole,—the symmetry and proportion of the latter being sacrificed to the aggressive brilliance of the former. It is so in Mr. Cushing's latest story, a book which —to bon-ow a figure from its title—sparkles in many facets with a cold, diamond-like glitter, but has no warm and steady glow. The author revels in phrase and imagery of the kind that may be most conveniently described as Meredithian ; and characters and situations seem to exist, not for their own sake, but in order to give opportunity for the fullest ex- ploitation of Mr. Cushing's literary accomplishments. There are in the novel, especially in the conversations, any num- ber of those airs and graces of manner which it is the fashion among a certain school of critics to extol as art, but much less of anything that the simple-minded person recognises as nature ; and a novel from which nature is ex- pelled with a literary pitch-fork is as unsatisfying as a dinner from which the piece de resistance has been withdrawn. Mr. and Mrs. Oldcastle, for example, are frankly impossible, or possible only in some ideal world of comedy "where no cold [reality] reigns ; " but they serve admirably as scaffolding for the display of Mr. Cushing's literary pyrotechnics. Indeed, for simple brilliance, the opening description of Priscilla, the claimant, is quite as noteworthy as anything in the books of Mr. Meredith, with the added advantage of being what Mr. Meredith's brilliant passages seldom are,—perfectly intelli- gible and coherent. Nor must it be supposed that the novel, as a mere story, is devoid of interest. The relations between Philip Tuer and the Countess—who is at once a beautiful soul, a married woman with a lover, and an accomplice in a, vulgar highway robbery—are neither natural nor pleasant ; but the complications consequent upon the return of Cornelius Crook, the true heir of Abbot's Hey, provide materials for a. really lively narrative, full of humour and spirit.
Mrs. Alexander's novels, if not specially striking, are always pleasantly readable, and though we cannot pretend to have a very distinct recollection of all the predecessors of Mammon, we feel pretty safe in saying that her latest book is also one of her best. She has told stories which are more absorbing and exciting than that of Claudia Tracey's quiet love-affair ; but there is no lack of interesting incident, and the character- portraiture has a quiet, unpretentious truthfulness which is very attractive. There is humour, too, in the book, the greater part of it being provided by one Captain O'Hara, who is not the farcical Irishman of the stage, but a really lifelike repre- sentative of the shrewd brightness of the best of his country- men. We think that what may be called fancy-titles for novels are generally a mistake, and novelists of the highest order seem to be of the same opinion; but Mammon is a really descriptive, and therefore fitting, name for Mrs. Alexander's story. Lady Elmslie's mammon-worship prompts her to jilt the man whom she loves, and to marry a wealthy Peer who makes her life miserable. The spirit of mammon urges Mr. Tracey to offer his daughter, as he might offer a dog, to Ralph Brandon in order to attain certainty that when he can no longer enjoy his hoards, they will be kept together, and probably increased. It is the temptation which wealth presents to an impecunious, clever, and ambitious man which makes Brandon for one moment faithless to his better nature ; and it is Claudia's rebellion against the domination of mammon which leads the story to its happy issue. The Selbys make a charming family group, and the faithful Tibbets is a delightful repre- sentative of a species which is nearly extinct. 31ammon is, in short, a book that is worth reading.
To review Mr. Richard Dowling's story, A Baled Quest, demands a light and cunning hand. It is the best novel he has written since The Mystery of Killard—that capital first book which was reviewed with due appreciation in these columns ten or more years ago—but it is difficult to say much about it, because if the critic strays beyond amiable generalities of admiration, he will almost certainly let fall some hint concerning the nature of the denouement, in which case Mr. Dowling and his readers, instead of being grateful for his honeyed words, will simply turn again and rend him. The latter will soon discover that the body and the last will and testament of Sir Andrew Brinfield have both disappeared from the death-chamber at Barmead Hall ; and how they disap- peared, and what became of them, shall assuredly not be guessed by the shrewdest from anything suggested, shadowed forth, or vaguely implied in this notice. If they will only read the book for themselves, by the time they reach the end of it they will know as much as the present critic knows at this moment ; and with this assurance they must be content. In kindness, however, we will add one word of advice to those worthy persons of well-regulated minds who pride them- selves upon their fixed habit of retiring to rest at an ap_ pointed hour. Such persons must not read A Baffling Quest at all, unless they can begin it at 8 o'clock in the morning, and work steadily at it during the day; because, if bedtime comes, say, in the middle of the second volume, they will simply not go to bed, and then they will be troubled with that worst of afflictions,—an uneasy conscience. There are one or two capital characters, and a dozen or more thrilling situations ; but the book is made what it is by one of the simplest and yet most ingenious plots we have had since the death of Wilkie Collins.
Miss Marie Connor, now Mrs. Leighton, is improving. The Lady of Balmerino is very far indeed from being a faultless book, but it is an advance upon that unpleasant and unwhole- some story, The Triumph of Manhood. It deals mainly with the adventures of a party of aristocratic fugitives from France, who find their way to East Forfarahire, bearing with them the famous diamond necklace of Marie Antoinette, and are received into the farmhouse of one David Ramsay, who is really Sir David Rothesay, a Jacobite sympathiser, in hiding from the emissaries of the Hanoverian Government. Sir David has a daughter bearing the somewhat incredible name of Rohilla, and a son with the still more incredible name of Alastor, who has run away from home and become the chief of a band of marauding caterans. With this brother Rohilla has secret meetings, which are discovered by the jealous St. Just, who has been pursuing his host's daughter with unwel- come attentions while engaged in the seduction of a neigh- bouring farm-girl. Rothesay is informed of these assignations, and, being conducted to the trysting-spot by St. Just, kills his son without recognising him, and is killed himself by members of the band who are concealed near. Other prominent characters in the story are Lord Lindsay, a nobleman under a cloud who is in love with Antoinette St. Just, and Robert Stewart, a young farmer who is the successful suitor of Rohilla. The precious diamonds are lodged in Lindsay's castle, which is attacked by the caterans, and the fight very considerably diminishes the number of Mrs. Leighton's per- sonages. Succeeding chapters dispose of most of the re- mainder, and the third volume deals death as mercilessly as the fifth act of Hamlet, with the difference that in the novel the hero and heroine are spared alive. There are occasional crudities of style, among which must be reckoned the rather stupid imitations of the Biblical manner of narration ; and Mrs. Leighton makes some curious slips—witness her reference to a priest conducting service in a "gown," and the references to the daughter of a baronet as " the Lady Rohilla." Still, as a brisk and readable story of action and incident, The Lady of Balmerino is likely to find favour.
The only remarkable feature of A Romance of Modern London —an extraordinarily ordinary performance—is the bewildering complication of the love-affairs with which it deals. Mr. A is in love with Miss B, who is not aware of his attachment, and is herself in love with Mr. C. Mr. C is, however, devoted to Miss D, who in turn is attached to him, though she has engaged herself to Mr. E. Her only excuse—if excuse it can be called—is that Mr. C, with the incomprehensible reticence more common in novels than in real life, has given Miss D no hint of his emotion ; and she, knowing of Miss B's passion, and believing it to be returned, does her best to bring about a marriage between the supposed lovers. The marriage comes off, and in a decorous way turns out to be more or less unsatisfactory. The achievement, however, exhausts Miss D's capabilities of self-sacrifice, for she cannot bring her- self to marry Mr. E, and the engagement is broken. Of course, before the end of the story is reached, Mr. E and Mrs. C, nee B, have been conveniently removed by death, and the widower and Miss D come at last to a mutual understanding, get married, and live happily ever afterwards. We have used initials instead of the names given to her people by " Curtis Yorke," partly to save space, and partly that we may not dis- count the interest of readers in a novel which, though very sentimental, is not absolutely destitute of respectable quali- ties. The story moves along with considerable vivacity ; and the main objection to it is, that if the author had allowed her characters to deviate into common-sense a little more fre- quently, there would have been no story to tell. And " Curtis Yorke" ought really to verify her quotations. There are some lines by Mr. George MacDonald beginning,—
" Alas, how easily things go wrong !"
of which minor novelists seem to be very fond. Their general treatment of them prompts the exclamation, "Alas, how easily quotations go wrong !" and " Curtis Yorke " gives us the latest incorrect reading.
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