BELINDA.*
Miss BROUGHTON is one of the few novel-writers whom we miss, now that no really great master of the art of fiction is left
among us, if for a season or two they make no sign. Her faults are as conspicuous as her merits, and they are the more irritat- ing, because it is evident from her persistence in them that she takes them to be meritorious ; but everything that she
writes is readable, and everybody remembers that there has not been a novel by her for some time, and is glad to see Belinda. This is a good deal to have to say of any writer, in an era of transient trash ; it is a pity that the author of Second Thoughts has not given her serious critics—not mere flatterers, but those who think she might make better use of her exceptional ability—much more than this to say for her present novel, which has come after an unusually long interval. In its predecessor, Second Thoughts, there was more literary merit, as well as greater excellence of other kinds, than Miss Broughton had pre- vionsly displayed; and she refrained in that work from most of her former offences against good taste, from flippant and irreverent treatment of sacred subjects, and from the distortion of family relations into their meanest, ugliest, and least respect- able forms. Not only had the book more grace in it, lint it had better grammar. In both these respects, we regret to find Miss Broughton backsliding. Belinda, with plen- tiful touches of the writer's characteristic brilliancy, and sharp, sudden pathos, with much pictorial beauty, and occa- sional charming gusts of fresh feeling for the loveliness and the loftiness of Nature—passages quite unlike the set descriptions in which most writers convey what they take to be local colour—carries us back to equivocal grammar and worthless company.
Age made contemptible by selfishness and insincerity, youth without reverence, and lives of human beings with as little principle or responsibility to govern or direct them as if the people in the story were all wandering elves, in a world where cause and effect have no correlation; such are the chief objects we are invited to contemplate in the coarse of the history of Belinda Churchill, one of the two sisters to whom Miss Broughton adheres, with the constancy of Mr. G. P. R. James to his two horsemen. One cannot read the book without wondering • Belinda. A Novel. By Rhoda Broughton. London: /untie' and Ron. whether the author really never did hear or read of people who could be good, without being dull ; who were capable of taking a serious view of their relations to each other—the view of the law and the Gospel alike—and maintaining them with decent consistency, but who were not ponderous bores, or totally uninteresting, for all that, If she acknowledges that such people exist, why can she not give them a place in her
novels? In the present instance, we have not the worthless, despicable, and hated father, who has figured in several of Miss Broughton's former stories ; but we have a selfish, worldly, false old woman, the grandmother of the two girls, who is as little to be admired. There is humour in the scenes between the Churchill girls and the old lady—whom "Belinda does not amuse, while Daudet, from whose pages her grandchildren's entrance rouses her, does "—but it is humour that has an ill taste ; humour that offends, just as when the young man with whom Belinda's sister has been flirting comes up with her on a mountain walk in Wales, and she says, "A more direct answer to prayer I have seldom heard of ;" that observation offends. Sayings of this kind are not witty, and not well- bred; they are the cheapest and the easiest sort of " patter " going, no more difficult or admirable than a " topical " song; and the author of Belinda has better things than vulgar flippanly to season her discourse withal. There is real comicality in her Miss Watson, the ever inopportunely opportune busybody, who is always at hand to interrupt the lovers, postpone the catastrophes, and generally help the plot — it needs helping a good deal, for there is not mach of it—and who is a kind of compound of Paul Pry and Miss Pratt, in The Inheritance. Miss Watson's rude- ness, her invincible assurance, her ineffable self-sufficiency, her shrewdness, and her pertinacity, are admirably drawn ; and as she is nobody's near relation, there is not the bitter taste in her sayings and doings that spoils the humour of the other sketches. There is also real comicality, close observation, and true sympathy in all the parts that the Churchill dogs are made to play in the drama. We have been indebted to Miss Broughton for several delightful dogs, especially for that sociable "Mr. Brown," who "did not mind mustard," and we are now truly grateful to her for" Punch" and " Slutty." The Churchill dogs are acquisitions of great price, especially "Punch," whose nicely graduated reception of his mistress's visitors is a gem of humour and appreciation.
Lively dialogue is always to be looked for in a novel by Miss Broughton, and Belinda gives us a good deal. It is sometimes rather too lively ; the sallies of Sarah occasionally go beyond the mark of good taste, as, for instance, when she talks of her sister's having gone to a party, where she met "the usual refuse of a second-rate literary salon ; dirty little poets, and greasy little positivists." Without pretending to a knowledge of how young ladies talk among themselves, we think it is safe to con- clude that they do not say that sort of thing. Sarah Churchill is an amusing person, but she is an example of Miss Broughton's tendency to draw one-sided characters. She is a flirt who is always flirting, a funny flirt, and not a bad creature, though she has no more principle than her grandmother ; but one can form no notion of her apart from flippant, rather vulgar, flirtatiousness, except it be a sharp knowledge of not the best world. We can laugh at, and with her, but she is too plainly and persistently a foil for the sentimental woes of Belinda to be true to any kind of nature, except it be that unclassed and elfish sort to which we have before alluded.
Belinda, the heroine of the story, is one of Miss Broughton's young ladies, and she falls in love with one of Miss Broughton's young gentlemen. The latter is a much-faded specimen; until the critical period of illicit love-making arrives, when he becomes as vivid, under the influence of her purpose, to take his neighbour's wife "to the Devil" (it is the lady who frankly and truly describes the transaction in these words) with him, as any of his predecessors. Otherwise, David Rivers conveys no notion of an individuality. The author has not troubled herself to give him any, and she bestows no originality (" no smallest," as she would say, in that queer diction so dear to her imitators), upon the device by which Belinda and David are parted, at a time when their love is innocent. The frank boldness that employs an expedient which belongs to the most venerable traditions of the novel-writer's craft, is only to be jus- tified by a satisfactory treatment of the subsequent situations. Miss Broughton has fulfilled that condition. Nothing can render her theme pleasant or edifying; but, having made her heroine marry a selfish, old, valetudinarian pedant, whose character she draws with cruel force and great success, for Professor Forth is as distinct as he is disagreeable, and thew brought her and her former lover together again under circum- stances of skilfully piled-up temptation and facilities, Miss Broughton treats the situation with great ability. We wish she had not created that situation, one as odious in fiction as. it is revolting in real life. The wooing of a married woman to her ruin by a man who profanes the name of love by that deed of theft and scoundrelism can never be otherwise than pitch, not to be touched without defilement; but the author deserves praise for the way in which she brings the sure an& certain penalty of illicit love into evidence. We know, of course, , that she will save Belinda (if it is to be called saving her) in. the end, and that she will kill off the inconvenient and incon- siderate old Professor, leaving her readers to finish the story; with wedding-bells and everlasting felicity, and taking no. account of the heavily-handicapped start in life of 'two people with such a record in their past as the scenes that precede the happy release of the Professor. This finale would leave much to be desired in point of morality, even according to the standard - to which it is reasonable to bring a novel, but for the way in which the writer handles her objectionable subject. That way vindicates her. The ill-savour is inevitable, but the poison is extracted by the following passage, and others like it, which we cannot quote, occurring after the lovers have arranged their flight :—
" Oh, if it were but all right ! all on the straight ! What could, Heaven do better than this ? Ay! but the might of that " if !" And you must go P' she says, sighingly ; 'you think it is quite unavoid- able; you must ?'—` I must,' he answers, in a tone as grudging as hers ; 'there is no help for it ; there are'—hesitating—' there are arrangements to be made that I must make personally, that could not be done by writing; and I must also go to Ifilnthorpe, to see about my work.'—' It—this—will not make any difference to your work ?' she asks rapidly, and in a tone of acute alarm ; it—it will not injure your prospects?'—' Of course not, of course not,' he answers, in a tone of feverish reassurance ; why should it ? What connection is there between a man's private life and his business.
relations ? What concern is it of theirs whether You run away with your neighbour's wife,' she says, in a low, hard voice,. finiuhing his sentence; why do you not speak out ? If a thing is. not too bad to do, it is not too bad to say.' But through the dark he divines the agony of the blush that accompanies her words ; and again that sword-like pain, which had marred the first moments °t- his triumphant bliss, once more traverses his heart Yon. will not be long away ?' she says, with a passionate wistfulness; 'you will not leave me long alone P'—` Need you tell me that ?' There is almost derision in his tone 'You will not despise- me more than you can help ?' she whispers, with a sob, dark as it is,. hiding her face on his breast. 'Of course you mast despise me, but you will try and hide it as well as you can will not you ?' Are his wits wandering ? Can this be his divine and lofty lady, preferring this miserable prayer ? Can this be he, blasphemously listening to it ? 'How ant I to get through these days r she moans,. clinging to him. Oh, come quickly back ! How am I to look him in the face, without telling him what I am planning against him?' If he says one hard word to me, it will be the death of me ! Happily
for me, he never does.' For all answer, he only strains.
her more desperately to his heart 'I shall be always-
fancying that you are growing tired of me,' she whispers. ` Promise. not to grow tired of me ! Promise ! promise ! Remember that I shall have nothing, nothing but you in the whole, wide world, and that when you are gone from me, everything will be gone ! But what is the use of making you promise ? How can you help it ? If you grow tired of me, you will grow tired; and there will be an end. of it."
The whole of this scene is remarkably fine, and may claim to be as far from "encouraging the others" as the sternest moralist could require. But now that we know Miss Broughton can deal powerfully and fitly with such a topic as the entrance on deadly sin and ruin by a man and. woman who have a prevision of the inevitable punishment, we should be glad to think that for the future she would let her lively fancy, her pleasant humour, her quick sympathy, her delightful sense of the beauties of Nature, her sharp satire, and her keen sensibilities find more wholesome exercise than she has afforded them in the medley of passion and triviality called. Belinda.
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