RECENT NOVELS.* M/88 BRADDON has attempted an ambitious task, for
in Gerard she not only borrows the motive of Faust, but presents its three prominent figures in modern guise, and sets them down in the London of to-day. There are also recurring suggestions of Balzac's story of La Peau de Chagrin ; and Miss Braddon, so far from keeping her originals in the back- ground, forces them to the front by a pertinacity of allusion which becomes monotonous, with the further disadvantage of accentuating the temerity of her undertaking. Her following of Goethe is either too close or not close enough. The Mephistopheles of Faust is a frankly supernatural being ; and his supernatural character is essential to the coherence and intelligibility of the great drama in which he is the protagonist. Justin Jermyn, Gerard's evil genius, is neither a Mephistopheles nor an ordinary human tempter who achieves his ends by force of will or constancy of insidious persuasion ; he is a compromise between these two conceptions, and therefore necessarily a failure. He calls up for his Faust a vision of his Margaret, with her Raffaele face bent over a sewing- machine, and performs other marvellous feats which Miss Braddon leaves wholly unaccounted for ; and while the absence of any attempt at explanation is, from one point of view, a wise artistic reserve, it undoubtedly has the result of preventing any clear realisation of Jermyn's personality and influence, without which the story falls to pieces for want of an apprehensible connection between cause and effect. For example, the perfectly fiendish action of Gerard in supplying the half-cured dipsomaniac who is Hester's father with the money that he knows will drive him to ruin and his daughter to despair, is so alien to his nature, as previously presented to us, that it demands a vitiating influence behind it which the mere cynical suggestions of Jermyn do not ade- quately provide. Human nature is inconsistent enough ; but the inconsistency of a man who in cold blood plots the ruin of the woman whom he loves, at the very time that his fine sense of honour forbids him to break faith with another woman for whom his love is dead, passes all bounds of credibility. We have dwelt mainly upon the defects of Gerard, because in any book of Miss Braddon's certain important virtues—bright- ness of narrative style and effectiveness of character-grouping —may be taken for granted. The days when the author of Lady Audley's Secret was regarded as a mere plot-weaver, a purveyor of crude sensationalism, have passed away. In a certain genre she has proved herself a true artist ; but for once she has chosen a motive in the treatment of which she is not seen at her best.
We are by no means sure that Mr. W. E. Norris has written a cleverer book than Mr. Chaine's Sons, though The Rogue had more epigrammatic brilliance, and was, moreover, much more nearly perfect in the matter of artistic construction. The new story is, however, far too cynical in tone to be wholly pleasant ; and we do not believe that the peculiar kind of cynicism by which it is distinguished finds any sufficient justification in the observed facts of life. Lazy and hasty thinkers have pro- bably pushed to a foolish extreme the theory that man is a creature of calculation, and woman a creature of impulse ; but even in its most indefensible form, there is more of broad truth in this view than in the opposite view which reverses the characterisation, and regards impulse and passion as things of which man is the slave and woman the master. This, however, is the view to which Mr. Norris has chosen for the time being to give his adhesion, and as a natural result the women who play the most prominent parts in his new novel fail to win either our sympathy or our belief. It would be impossible to recount the ways in which the two heroines, Ida Pemberton and Violet Stanton, manifest their cold-blooded self-control, and their will and power to suppress all im- pulses that do not tend to self-advancement ; and it must suffice to say that Mr. Norris deliberately destroys the charm of his portraits without imparting to them the reality which is sometimes a compensation for ugliness. With the excep- tion of Hubert Chaine, who is a good-hearted nonentity, the
• (1.) Gerard ; or, the World, the Flesh, and the Devil. By the Author of 'Lady Audley's Secret," &c. 3 vols. London : Eimpkin. Marshall, and Co.— (2.) Mr. Chaine's Sons. By W. E. Norris. 3 vols. London : R. Bentley and Son. --(3.) Patience Holt. By Georgians H. Craik (Mrs. A. W. May). 3 vols. London : R. Bentley and Son.—(4.) Beacon Fires. By E. Werner. 3 vols. Lon- don : R. Bentley and 80n.—(5.) Kilcarra. By Alex. Tunes Shand. 3 vols. Edinburgh and London: W. Blackwood and Sons.—(6.) Dumaresg's Daughter. By Grant Allen. 3 vols. London : Chatto and Windns.—(7.) One Beason Why. By Beatrice Whitby. 2 vols. London: Hurst and Blackett.
men are not much pleasanter company than the women ; but it must be admitted that they are less incredible, inasmuch as they represent with no more exaggeration than is fairly allowable, certain familiar though very nnadmirable types of masculine character. As a turning-up of the seamy side of "good society," Mr. Chaine's Sons is a very effective piece of work, but it is not the work of an artist who sees life steadily and sees it whole, because life has a side which is not wholly seamy. As a mere story, it is, we think, very successful, and testimonials to Mr. Norris's literary craftsmanship are at this time of day altogether superfluous ; but to enjoy the book as we have enjoyed some of its author's previous works, is unfortunately impossible.
Mrs. May's books are never deficient in the charm given by perfect refinement, light humour, and quiet, nnstrained pathos ; and in Patience Holt these things, with other good qualities not less admirable and delightful, are as conspicuous as ever. The theme of the novel is the mistake of a masculine match-maker,—perhaps the only match-maker in fiction who is never contemptible and always loveable. The heart of Mr. Wharton, the kindly, simple-minded, unworldly country squire, is bound up in his only son, who, since the death of his wife when Ralph was a little lad, has been the constant and only companion of his widowhood. The boy has inherited his father's simple nobleness of character, but the fondness of the old man, which would not allow him to let his son be absent from his side, has left poor Ralph with the scantiest education, and with a loutish shyness which effectually dis- guises all the real beauty of his nature. Then the bright, clever, wilful, half-irritating and wholly fascinating girl Patience Holt rises above the dear old man's horizon ; and the first moment that he sees her, he feels that if his ugly duckling could only win the love of this captivating maiden, he would soon manifest his native swanhood, while for the girl herself who has so completely subjugated him, what better fate could there be than to have the devotion of one so loving and so loyal as the son who in his twenty-five years of life has never given him a single moment of trouble or shame ? And so the simple squire organises his little plot, the results of which may not be hinted at here, but must be gathered from Mrs. May's winning pages. Alike in conception and in treatment, Patience Holt has an irre- sistible freshness, the fascination of which must be felt by the most jaded novel-reader. The sketches of the child- hood of the quick, imaginative Patience and her stolid,. commonplace brother Fred, who regard each other with mingled feelings of disapproval and admiration, are not un- worthy of a place beside certain memorable chapters at the beginning of The Mill on the Floss ; and the story of poor Ralph's courtship is told with a sympathetic insight and a fine subtlety of observation which do full justice to all its pos. sibilities of humorous and pathetic interest. Had we in the course of every publishing season a score, or even a dozen, novels as pleasant as Patience Holt, the life of a critic of fiction would be almost enviable.
Beacon Fires—which we should describe as a romance rather than as a novel—is a rather strong and sombre story, the scene of which is laid in Germany during the years preceding the Franco-German War, the great campaign being effectively utilised in the third volume as a means to the bringing about of a satisfying dhwuement. As a picture of various phases of life among the " classes " in Germany, the book can be heartily and unreservedly praised ; and the humorous sub-story, which deals with the love-affairs of the easy-going young giant, Willibald von Eschenhagen, is really a good deal more enjoyable than the greater part of the rather melodramatic romance in which the Byronic hero,, Hartmut Falkenried, is the leading figure. There is, however, a point in the story at which Hartmut ceases to be merely histrionic and becomes human ; and from this point on- ward he is, what the writer has meant him to be all along, the true centre of interest. His midnight interview with the stern father who has disowned him, and who refuses to condone the dishonour of the stainless name of Falkenried, is a really strong piece of work,—a tragic situation quite un- spoiled by anything in the way of sentimental unreality ; and hardly leas impressive is the pathetic and picturesque recital of the successful issue of the deed of daring by which the son saves the father's life at the peril of his own. Beacon Fires is certainly an unequal story ; but with all its faults, it has qualities which raise it considerably above the level of the average circulating-library novel.
If we may judge from the evidence of a name, the author of Kilcarra is undoubtedly an Irishman, and at any rate the book testifies to intimate knowledge of Galway and its people ; but Mr. Shand has hardly sufficient humour to enable him to produce a typical:story of rural Irish life. Of course the Irish peasant of a writer like Lover, who never opened his lips save to make a joke or perpetrate a bull, was not less of an idealisa- tion than is the picturesque peasant of the operatic stage, who spends his time in dancing complicated figures, and singing choruses mainly composed of " Tra-la-la ;" but even in the greyest days—and grey days have of late been numerous enough in the Emerald Isle—Pat's nature reflects every stray gleam of sunshine, and whenever his voice is heard, it may be taken for granted that neither the provocative to a laugh nor the laugh itself is very far away. There is no laughter in Mr. Shand's Irish pages, and their unrelieved sobriety, almost grimness, leaves us with the same sense of something wanting that we should have in a rural Scottish tale in which there was not a word of either whisky or theology. Still, notwith- standing this deficiency, Kilcarra is a decidedly readable book, for Mr. Shand has a good eye for character, a very fair in- vention in the matter of incident, and a narrative style which, without possessing any special charm, has at any rate the merits of simplicity, ease, and vivacity, in the matter of the story there is hardly anything that is specially new, except perhaps the part played by Martin French's pretty young English wife in restoring peace between her husband and his " people; " but there is nothing at all—at least, in the Irish part of the novel—that strikes the reader as being merely mechanical or conventional work. If it is unlikely that any- body will think Kilcarra in any way striking, few readers will fail to find it pleasant and interesting.
In the matter of construction, Mr. Grant Allen generally shows himself a careful and painstaking workman ; but as a mere story, Duntaresy's Daughter is so loosely put together as to suggest to the least exacting reader the reproachful word "pot-boiler." The chapters devoted to the experiences of the two Linnells during the siege of Khartoum are capital in their way ; but here they are mere padding, and the very late intro- duction of the three young Americans who do so much to help the story on to a comfortable conclusion, gives one an idea that Mr. Grant Allen wrote his novel, as it were, from hand to mouth. Still, we like Dumaresg's Daughter a great deal better than we liked such predecessors as The Devil's Die and This Mortal Coil, which were very clever, very ingenious, and intensely disagreeable per- formances. There is nothing disagreeable in the new book ; on the contrary, it is a bright, wholesome, and attractive story, and if while engaged in the writing of it Mr. Grant Allen had given himself a little more time and taken a little more trouble, it might have been one of his most successful novels. Haviland Dumaresq, the old philosopher, who is one-third pathetic, one-third contemptible, and one-third venerable, is a really original and striking figure ; and the three Vanrenens, who make such a very unfavourable first impres- sion, turn out to be such delightful people that we feel we have not had nearly enough of them. Psyche Haviland's abject subservience to her relentlessly worldly father will seem to most people irritating, rather than admirable, and we can- not pretend to be very much interested in her; but the philosopher and the young Americans are perfect. Though it may seem to the cynic a fond saying, a great failure may be as surprising as a great success ; and we could not have thought that Miss Beatrice Whitby had it in her to write so poor a novel as One Reason Why. The book is of sentimentality all compact; the story, told at wearisome length, is one in which it is impossible to feel anything but the most languid interest ; while the literary style is ruined by fluent verbosity, and by a bewildering accumulation of incongruous metaphors. The governess-heroine, and the step-son of her employer who falls in love with her, are so utterly unreal, so strikingly deficient in flesh-and-blood vitality, that by the time we reach the end of the first volume, we are heartily tired of both of them ; and, un- fortunately, there is no one else in the book to whom we can turn with any sense of relief. Even the terribly dull narrative is, however, preferable to the passages of reflection with which it is so copiously interspersed. For representative quotation, space is wanting ; but readers who will turn to a passage in the last chapter of the first volume, about a photograph of the mainspring of the human heart, an unfurled flag of our bliss which almost covers us, and a tragic stream in which our hopes are engulfed, while our joys reel and stagger on the banks, will not accuse us of doing injustice to the literary eccentricities of One Reason Why.
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