RECENT NOVELS.* IT happens that this month the first two
works upon our list of recent novels are from the pens of the two feminine writers who, for a quarter of a century or more, have been most successful in appealing to the tastes of the person who may be vaguely described as the average novel-reader. Both in the case of Miss Braddon and of Mrs. Henry Wood, this success was attained in the first instance mainly by the skilful in- vention and management of intricate plots and thrilling situations ; and, if we remember rightly, it was in criticism of their early novels that the word " sensational " was first used as a critical epithet. Miss Braddon, however, has always been something more than a mere plot-weaver. True, she has always paid special attention to structure, and the intrinsic interest of any one of her stories would be quite obvious were it divested of its literary body and exhibited as a mere skeleton of narrative ; but this intrinsic story-interest, as we may call it, has always been reinforced by lifelike presentation of character, picturesqueness of description, and general vigour of literary style. In one of her earliest novels, The Doctor's Wife. Miss Braddon proved herself able to dispense almost entirely with what was called sensationalism, and yet to excite and maintain the reader's interest,—an experiment which she has since more than once repeated, and which she repeats in The Fatal Three, though not, we think, with quite her usual success. Our recollections of The Doctor's Wife are be- coming a little dim, and therefore we make a comparison with hesitation ; but we should say that while The Fatal Three is superior to The Doctor's Wife in literary finish, and in all those qualities which carefully utilised experience can supply, it is inferior to it in strength of human interest. In both books the heroine comes perilously near to wrecking her own and her husband's happiness ; but we have much more sympathy with the romantic though doubtless foolish young wife of the provokingly prosaic and undemonstrative country practitioner, who wanders into danger unawares, than we have with the more mature woman in the later story who sacrifices the peace of a noble man and a loving, faithful husband, partly to her "views," and partly to a fancy which might have been scattered to the winds by an hour's sensible examination of the evidence on which it rested. We think that one important law of novel-writing may be thus stated:—' It is legitimate to allow a person occupying the position of heroine to commit certain acts of folly—indeed, such an expedient
• (1.) The Fatal Three. By the Author of "Lady Andlefs Secret." 8 vols. London: Simpkin, Marshall, and Co.-----(2.) The Story of Charles Strange. By Mrs. Henry Wood. 3 vols. London : R. Bentley and Son.—(3.) The Youngest Miss Green. By F. W. Robinson. 3 vols. London : Hurst and Blackett.—(4.) A Daughter of Dives. By Leith Derwent. 3 vols. London: Hurst and Blaekett. —(5) The Pit Town Coronet : a Family Mystery. By Charles J. Wills. 3 vols. London: Ward and Downey.—(6.) Marahuno a Romance. By H. B. Marriott Watson. London : Longman!, Green, and Ce.
may serve the purpose of making her more human and loveable—but it is not legitimate to allow such folly to pass beyond a certain recognised limit,—namely, the limit of possible sympathy.' Now, Mrs. Greswold's folly does pass this limit ; and though we would not go so far as to declare the character untrue to human nature, the possibilities of human fatuity being quite incalculable, we may say with less hesita- tion that it is here an artistic mistake. The matter would not be worthy of so much attention were Miss Braddon a mere hack novelist. But she is something more than this ; she has shown herself to be an artist, and as such she must be criticised. When we get away from Mrs. Greswold's scruples and fancies, we are irritated no longer, but pleased and satisfied. The author's workmanship is as careful and thorough as ever ; the characters stand well upon their feet ; the writing is excellent; and, apart from the defect noted above, the story is thoroughly interesting, though it has much less of the interest of tragedy than might be expected from the sombre title.
Miss Braddon's first great success was Lady Audley's Secret. published a few months after Bast Lynne, which was the first great success of Mrs. Henry Wood. Roughly speaking, the books were contemporaneous. People read them together. and, perhaps not unnaturally, placed their authors in one class, the general tendency being, if we remember rightly, to put Mrs. itenry Wood somewhat above Miss Braddon. The subsequent achievements of the two writers failed to justify this compara- tive estimate. As novel after novel came from Mrs. Henry Wood's pen, it cannot be said that her popularity with the ordinary novel-devourer, who simply wants a few hours of imaginative excitement, showed any signs of diminution, and to him it was a matter of indifference whether the excitement were provided by Miss Braddon or Mrs. Wood. More careful readers, however, noticed that while the novels of the former were characterised by sustained fecundity of invention in the matter, and increasing grace and finish in the manner, those of the latter displayed a monotony of structure which spoke of narrowness of inventive resource, and which threw into pro- minence a certain colloquial commonness of style that had at first escaped observation. Mrs. Wood put all her best work into the first dozen of her books, and during her latter years she was living in public favour not by her work, but on her reputation. That reputation could never have been won by The Story of Charles Strange. The tale is made up of mysteries which have no vital connection with each other, which are exceedingly clumsy in construction, and which. when they cease to be mysteries, reveal themselves as mares'-nests. The attempt to interest ourselves in the plot being a hopeless failure, we direct attention to the style, and amuse ourselves by culling such flowers of speech as "blushing furiously" and "a spell of kisses." An unedu- cated servant speaks of his fellow-servants as "retainers ;" a young lady is described as being " enshrined " in a rectory ; and with regard to a certain mysterious crime, we are told that "some people said felony, others whispered forgery," Mrs. Wood having been apparently under the delusion that felony is some special offence like murder or arson, instead of being the legal name for a class of crimes in which• forgery is included. It would have been quite as sensible to write, "Some people said dishonesty, others whispered pocket- picking." The redeeming point in Mrs. Henry Wood's poorer work—of which The Story of Charles Strange provides an average specimen—is the vivacity which is inspired by self- confidence and success. Mrs. Wood believed in herself, in her plots, in her characters, and in her style; and it is wonderful to what extent such belief on the part of an author will compel the belief of other people.
The first volume of The Youngest Miss Green is somewhat wearisome, for we are set down in the midst of a group of persons whose true characters we can only guess at, and whose real relations to each other are also matters of mere specula- tion. The method of those writers who, when they introduce their characters, let us know at once by some arbitrary labelling that one man is a hero and another a scoundrel, is not artistic ; but neither is Mr. Robinson's, and the latter has the further disadvantage of irritating the reader and damping his interest. In the second volume we begin to find out where we are, and to feel our feet ; while the third volume is rich in that kind of excitement which is dear to lovers of melodramatic fiction. Indeed, The Youngest Miss Green is melodramatic from first to
last. Mr. Robinson and Mr. Farjeon are the only two sur- viving literary disciples of Dickens; and in those portions of their work where the discipleship makes itself most evident, they reproduce Dickens's weak points rather than his strong ones, which is, of course, just what we should expect. Mr. Robinson has, however, one of Dickens's strong points ; he can give vitality to characters whom we know could never by any possibility have existed,—can compel imaginative realisa- tion where intellectual credence is impossible. This is not, perhaps, a very valuable gift ; but it serves to give interest to a book which would otherwise repel us by numberless incon- sistencies, improbabilities, and incoherencies. The style, too, is very careless ; but one character in the book, Jule Green, suffices to atone for a number of literary and other sins. The portrait of Jule would not be unworthy of the author of John Herring, and in saying this we mean to award high praise.
We have probably before now expressed our opinion that " Leith Derwent " is a pseudonym with a feminine per- sonality behind it. At any rate, it veils the identity of an exceedingly able writer, whose novel, A Daughter of Dives, is decidedly the cleverest work she has yet produced. Pleasanter books she has written, for of the six principal characters, no fewer than four—the unscrupulous clergy- man Gray, his shallow-hearted daughter Madge, the drunken millionaire Glenn, and the fiendishly malignant woman whom he makes his wife—are people whom in real life we would go some distance out of our way to avoid ; but even in delineating these very objectionable and repellent persons, Leith Derivent does not overstep the modesty of nature, being not less vivacious than vigorous. The two men are specially good ; indeed, the only consideration of any im- portance to be urged against the hypothesis upon which we have ventured, is that the treatment of masculine personality and character has so much more of grip and verisimilitude than is generally found in most portraits of men drawn by feminine friends. There are one or two trifling defects in the machinery of the book. It seems unlikely that Frank Gray should have been sent out by the promoters of a swindling company to write up a worthless mine, unless they were well assured not only that he knew their wishes, but that he was willing to comply with them ; for it is obvious that by refusing to take this precaution, they not only incurred useless ex- penditure, but laid themselves open to the risk of exposure. Then, too, the complications at the close of the book are rather clumsily led up to, and strike one as being in themselves somewhat gratuitous ; but here our grumbling ceases, and we have no other words than those of praise for a most interesting and well-told story. The mining chapters are excellent ; so are the various appearances of that smooth-spoken but audacious schemer, the Rev. Alban Gray ; and the picture of the heroine, who, by-the-way, is sometimes called Dolores and sometimes Inez, is full of colour and rich, warm life. One thing we confess we do not understand. Why is Glenn, the mining millionaire, spoken of after his death as insane ? It seems to us that he was as sane as any habitual drunkard can be expected to be.
The story which provides the bone of The Pit Town Coronet is decidedly disagreeable. Georgina and Lucy War- render are cousins who have been brought up together, and the former marries Reginald Haggard, a relative of the Earl of Pit Town. Some months after the marriage, while Mrs. Haggard and her cousin are alone together on the Continent, Haggard having gone on a trip to America, Lucy makes the confession that she is about to become a mother, and by threatening to commit suicide, induces the young wife to swear that she will help to conceal her shame and to keep her secret. In an obscure French village, where the two women are altogether unknown, a bey is born who is presented to the world as the son of Mrs. Haggard. Subsequently, the wife has a boy of her own, who, of course, takes the position of younger son ; and as the tale nears its close, the illegitimate child of Lucy attains the position of next heir to the Pit Town title and .estates,—a situation which, it will be seen, is rich in the com- plications dear to the novelist. Were this the whole of the tale, it would be unpleasant enough ; but Mr. Wills heightens the repulsiveness by making Haggard himself the father of Lucy's child, the seduction having taken place but a few months after his marriage. It is only fair to say that the -telling of the story is as offenceless as it well could be ; but
the story itself is offence enough ; and the choice of such a revolting central theme is specially inexcusable in a writer who has quite sufficient ability to confer interest on more wholesome subjects. There is a great deal of real clever- ness in the book. The characters are all alive, the conversa- tions are exceedingly bright and natural, there is in the novel a genuine vein of somewhat pungent humour, and the style has, for the most part, both vigour and accuracy, though Mr. Wills is sometimes careless enough,—witness such constructions as ordinary people like you and I," and "everybody was sorry to go when they left." Some of the characters are very fresh and amusing, notably Justice Haggard, whose lifelong ambition is to breed the ideal pig ; the mildly amorous and vigorously henpecked clergyman, Mr. Dodd, and his energetic, vinegary spouse, who may almost be said to run a good second to the immortal Mrs. Proudie.
Should the curious romance entitled Marahuna achieve wide popularity, its author may count upon realising one of the disadvantages which now seem attendant upon popular applause. The hunter after plagiarisms will discover in it a quarry after his own heart, and will be able to prove to the satisfaction of every one who has not read the book, that Mr. Marriott Watson has stolen, or at any rate adapted, his principal incidents from Edgar Poe and Mr. Rider Haggard ; and that he owes the conception of his central character partly to La Motte Fouque, and partly to Nathaniel Hawthorne. These accusations, if made, will be worth just as much and just as little as similar accusations which have from time to time provided material for a nine-days' talk. We are certainly reminded by the early chapters of that weird story, The Manu- script Pound in a Bottle, which was Poe's first literary success ; She is recalled to memory by more than one passage in the later portion of the story ; and it cannot be denied that Marahuna belongs to the same family as Undine and Donatello. With sensible people, however, parallelisms of this kind count for very little. They know that human invention is limited, and that a creator of marvels may easily follow in a predecessor's footsteps without knowing of that predecessor's existence ; while as for the conception of a human being in whom a soul is to be born by the travail of some passionate experience, this may surely be regarded as common property which any writer is free to work out as best he can. To say that Mr. Marriott Watson's working-out is altogether satisfactory, would be to say too much; but that his attempt is able and interesting, will not, we think, be denied by any candid critic.
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