LONDON'S HEART.* A NOVEL written with what is commonly known
as "a purpose" challenges criticism on more points than upon merely its artistic correctness, and Mr. Farjeon has so very distinct a purpose in the story before us, we are bound to examine it a little more minutely than its appearance as a fairly clever and amusing tale would at first seem to warrant. It has been our pleasant duty heretofore to hold up this author's writing for almost unqualified commendation, but we confess his present work disappoints us. He is far too able a writer so need recourse to the cynical style which is made by many to cover such a large area of intellectual barrenness. For we think it might be laid down almost as an axiom, that in proportion to the smallness of any human being's nature is his inability to discern the good in other men. And Mr. Farjeon, whose former writings are sufficient evidence against any radical narrowness in his own powers, blots
good work when he dips his pen in gall. Bitterness, of course, always tells, and unfortunately there are but too large a number of readers who demand pungency before truth- fulness, and others, our author may not improbably observe, who never discern truth at all, except through the medium of an exaggeration. But we must examine Mr. Farjeon's position a little more in detail. His story opens in Soho, that region so fertile in the hands of the novelist ; and we may observe, whatever may be our private opinion of the aggregate of misery and squalor which exist in any overcrowded district in London, that that aggre- gate, when resolved into its constituent atoms by Mr. Farjeon, will be shown to have honesty, purity, tenderness, and beauty at its very core. Nor does this militate against our original charge, since it is not against the poor Mr. Farjeon's sarcasms are levelled. A ray of light takes fresh beauty in our eyes seen through a prism. Is it that our author has more minutely disintegrated the units in this lower class, that be paints them in so much fairer colours than those more heavily weighted with privileges whom he so bitterly condemns ? But since we are about to join issue with him for laying the lash on too heavily, we will not quarrel with him for not applying it more universally. One of the first aims of this book is to expose the fearful risk to which both their employes and the public are exposed through the rapacity of Railway Companies, who exact from the pointsmen and others upon whose constant vigilance the safety of the public mainly depends an undue amount of labour. If Mr. Farjeon's fiction rests upon fact, he has made out a strong case against railway companies in general, and done good service to the community at large, though we are afraid he has made poor Jim Podmore too hopelessly sleepy to be a fair specimen of an average poiutsman, however cruelly overtasked. His special vocation requiring intense alertness, not hard mental or manual labour, overwakeful- nem would be quite as natural, and to the individual a more cruel result. Polly Podtnore, or as her father dubs her, "Little Polly- pod," the tired pointaman's only child, is to our mind the true centre of interest in the book. For Pollypod's sake we real it to the end, and though when we close the story we leave her a child still, few readers will, we think, be sorry if they follow our example. There is considerable imaginative power in the description of the various inhabitants of the many-peopled house where Mr. Farjeon's heroine, as well as little Pollypod, finds her home. It certainly is not for nothing that our author has studied the quaint devices by means of which a vast class of respectable " unassigned " poor eke out a livelihood. Here, on the second floor of the house, we encounter an "umbrella and parasol * London e Heart. By B. L. Farjeon. London: Tinsley Brothers. 1873.
hospital," and the man who has so described his trade is a genius in his way, and must, we think, have been drawn from life. It could be only from close inspection such a picture as this was taken :—
"There could not have been fewer than a hundred umbrellas and parasols in the room, and there was not one of them which did not show signs of having seen a groat deal of life—evidently much more than was good for it. Here was one reclining against the wall, sur- mounted by a great knob set upon one side of its head. It had a rakish and dissipated aif, and seemed to declare that it had been out late at nights, in all sorts of company and all sorts of weather, and liked it ; and that when tho slits in its silk coat were mended, it intended to resume its dissolute life. Hero was one, a sad-looking gingham, very faded and worn, telling by the plainest of signs the story of its poor life and that of its owner. In your fancy you could see the faded ging- ham, on its rickety frame, being borne along through wind and sleet; and if you peeped beneath the awning you would see a patient-looking woman, meanly dressed, and you would know, without being told in so many words, that the burden of life had withered all the roses that once bloomed on her cheek ; for a dozen years since she could have been but a girl, and could not have been otherwise than pretty. Here was one, thin and sleek, with ivory handle, which said, 'I am faded gentility.' It needed no great stretch of the imagination to see the hand in its well-worn and much-mended glove that had clasped that handle in the streets for many months. Here was one which proclaimed, have been dropsical from early youth, and there is no cure for me ;' and indeed all Gribble junior's skill would not avail him if he endeavoured to gat the bulge out of it. In addition to these and other types—almost as various as the types to be found in human beings— were naked umbrellas and parasols which had been stripped of their clothing. Here was one battered and bruised, with half-a-dozen ribs broken. Here was one which asserted proudly, 'I am a Paragon, and I glory to show myself!' Here was the dainty frame of a parasol standing like a shame-faced girl by the side of the frame of an old-man umbrella that had led a bad life."
There is a something, too, about "Old Wheels," Lily's grand- father, which makes us feel sure, if we inclined to plunge with our author into the depths of Soho, the old man would be there to seek and find. With Lily herself we are less satisfied. When first introduced to her, she is singing at the "White Rose Music Hall." And clearly, one of the purposes in oar author's mind when he wrote his book was to show the evil done by low music- halls in general, and by this one in particular,—their demoralising influence not only on the audience nightly assembled within their walls, but upon the neighbourhood in their immediate vicinity. Yet if his aim be, as we must conclude it is, to warn and, on the whole, as at present conducted, condemn, he could scarcely have chosen a more unsatisfactory mode of carrying out his intention than by making his pure and guileless heroine a singer in one of those very halls. Lily's one charm to the very last is her childlike innocence ; yet she has been subjected to the same evil influences, which have proved so fatal to those around her. There may be something very attractive in this, but it scarcely serves Mr. Farjeon's purpose, and is, to say the least, highly improbable. There may be many a one who remains radically honest and uncorrupted in the lowest troupe of the lowest music-hall. But childlike innocence dies in a polluting atmosphere, and if not, our author's own argument is materially weakened. As a mere story, we are mildly interested in Lily's fate, though we care infinitely more about her grandfather. In the sketch of the Crearnwells—father and son—we have none of Mr. Farjeon's best work. The Rev. Emanuel Crearnwell is a caricature too over-drawn to be a type of any class. The man of stern and sombre creed, stiff and uncompromising, who sends a woman to prison for picking sticks, and disinherits his only son because he cannot conform to the ways of a severe household and the opinions his father holds, is not the man to commit a deliberate fraud to secure for that almost hated son a few pounds. The two classes of evil do not go together. In the bitterness of his dis- like to the creature of his brain, Mr. Farjeon has mixed in his nature qualities that could scarcely co-exist, and spoiled the rraisemblance of the character he has drawn. Undoubtedly, in the clerical, as in any other profession, there may be bad men, and probably in no profession is there a larger number of stupid ones ; but as a body, we maintain they are utterly undeserving of such satire as is hurled at them in these pages. Here is an instance
"The tithes were small, a circumstance which it is waste of time to mention, for what minister loves his emoluments bettor than his church ? And yet in common minds a mean suspicion is sometimes engendered as to the comparative value of one and the other in the eyes of the clergy. Without indorsing this suspicion—rejecting it, in- deed, as the vilest of calumnies—it is curious to observe that, when a minister has a • call,' the summons from Heaven almost invariably holds out the promise of an increased earthly income."
When we consider that a clergyman has to live, as well as a doctor or a lawyer, we need scarcely look on this suspicion as vilest calumny, but yet how many instances rise up before of us of another side to this question ! Is there any one who does not know some man, not to say some dozen men, remaining in the lower room for conscience' or for his work's sake? The last request for preferment which came before the writer's knowledge was from an able man, who asked for the poorest living that could be found in the lowest locality in London. We need scarcely say his request was granted.. But Mr. Farjeon brings a sterner charge. Few men are in- different to getting on in the world, and we should not ourselves hold a clergyman necessarily a worse man because he preferred a good living to a bad one. But when our author adds, speaking of course of the Rev. Emanuel Creamwell,—
" Not one of his parishioners loved him. But they thought he was a. good man, notwithstanding—so good, indeed, that goodness became dis- agreeable in their eyes, and some of them deemed that it must be ex- ceedingly pleasant to be naughty. The fact of this man having the charge of many precious souls (to use the stereotyped vernacular), and. preaching the highest and holiest lessons for years to persons who did. not, could not love him, was one of the strangest of anomalies. In his exhortations he seemed to declare. am sent to bruise, not to heal; hero is a stone for you; here are vinegar and salt for your wounds ; here are shadows and awful images to appal you, and to make your death-bed agonising; here are the waters of grace—taste them, and find them bitter !' After such exhortation, how could they love God ?—how could they love His minister? Prisoners do not love their gaolers. And this man, having the charge of souls, held them in grim custody with the hard spirit of a gaoler. They writhed and suffered in his grasp, but they had no word to say against him. He was an eminently re- spectable man; had never been seen to smile ; and they touched their hats to him, and paid him every deference. But it was remarkable that no person had ever been known to utter a word in praise of him,"
—and then proceeds to describe how he, and such as he, aid justices of the peace to exercise the extremest rigour of the law in the punishment of the smallest offences, ridiculing at the same time these said 'Justices,' thus,—
" These two men were Justices of the Peace. Their names, unlike- themselves, are of no consequence. It would be hard to give any- other reason for their being appointed Justices of the Peace than that one was a retired colonel and the other a retired sugar-baker; and doubtless it would be a distinct libel to declare that they knew as much of law as the man in the moon. Undoubtedly they must have been worthy ; undoubtedly they must have been just. What is known as 'Justices' Justice' has been a theme for satire and rebuke as long as- we can remember, and it is a blessing to live in a land where it would not be tolerated that one in power having committed a gross injustice —having, perhaps, helped to make infamous what might have been made beneficial—should be permitted to retain an authority which is. onlyused to be abused. So perfect are our institutions, that it would be next to impossible that one who had proved himself by his acts to be unworthy of the distinction should be allowed to sit in judgment on his fellows year after year, to dispense unequal and merciless justice. It would be monstrous otherwise."
Here we know at least that the author has stepped from the true- place of the novelist to deliver prejudiced judgment—a judgment eagerly endorsed by the large number whose only intellectual foothold is their power to despise—but with no sufficient founda-- tion of fact on which to build, since for one parish priest who oversteps the law on the side of cruelty, there are at least five hundred, often feeble enough men in other respects, who would make a considerable effort to save some widow's son or orphaa child from punishment and disgrace. "It is the boy's first offence, he was sorely tempted, spare the father's honest name if you can,' said one in our hearing to a magistrate not long since. That that matt was a truer type of his class, let any amount of impartial evidence decide. But we have wandered from the actual story of the book, which deals much with other scenes and characters,—with betting- and racing men, their wiles and victims,' and with all the intricate machinery which makes up one phase of life in London's Heart.. The story itself is not without many excellent touches, and is- never heavy ; but it is by no means such good work as, judging by former experience, Mr. Farjeon has it in him to do.
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