RECENT NOVELS.* MB. NORRIS'S stories owe their attractiveness mainly to
gifts and graces which have often been enumerated in these
• (1.) Billy Bellew. By W. E. Norris. 2 vols. London : Chatto and windup. —(2.) Not Counting the Cost. By " Tasma." 3 vole. London: Richard Bentley and Son.—(3.) Marjory's Mistake. By Adeline Sergeant. 3 vole. London: Hurst and Blackett.—(4.) Deb o' Malty's. By Mrs. George Corbett. 2 vols. London : Hurst and BlackAL—(5 ) Terminations. By Henry James. London: William Heinemann.—(6.) Jacob Niemand. By Robert H. Sherard. London: Ward and Downey.—(7.) The Lowe Affairs of an Old Maid. By Lilian Bell. trinann Hammon Low and Co.
columns,—to their perfect urbanity, to the knowledge of the world everywhere displayed in them, to their unpretentiously
cultivated style, to their faultless taste, and to their genial if sometimes mordant humour. These characteristics of matter and manner give to Mr. Norris's portraiture both life- likeness and finish ; and we think be is seen at his best when, as in Billy Bellew, he chooses to give prominence to a type of character the very familiarity of which in real life seems to deter rather than attract the ordinary novelist. For example, though the fool pure and simple is a by no means uncommon figure in fiction, in real life—pace a celebrated dictum of Carlyle's—he is comparatively rare. What is common is not the fool absolute, but the man who in various ways is more or less foolish, and who, nevertheless, has certain qualities of in- tellect or character which tend not exactly to throw his folly into the shade, but to make it after a fashion admirable or lovable. Mr. William Bellew, known among his friends as " Billy "—the " Billy " may be noted as a significant touch—is one of these familiar figures. He acts about as foolishly as any wholesome-natured young man could well act, and yet we feel all along that his folly and his likeable.
ness are so inextricably intermingled, that if he were wiser he would be much less winning. The narrative is in structure
simple enough. Billy falls in love in the most natural way in the world with Winifred Forbes, and Mr. Norris would have had no story to tell had not the young man's silliness pre- viously allowed him to be drawn into an entanglement with the very objectionable Mrs. Littlewood ; for though the asso- ciation is perfectly innocent, in the ordinary sense of that word, it suffices to hold the luckless Billy in a bondage of which he is growing heartily tired, but from which he has neither the courage nor the hard-heartedness to break loose. At last, wearied of a selfish woman's whims and her worthless husband's sponging, the victim does manage to escape ; but luck is still against him, and finally an accident in the hunting-field brings Billy's perplexities and his life also to an end. Thus briefly summarised, the story must look somewhat ineffective, and indeed it may be admitted that Billy Bellew owes its interest rather to portraiture than to plot. The hero—though it is rather absurd to apply the term to such a very unheroic figure—is delineated not merely with cleverness, but with sympathy, and Micky, whose untimely taking-off is not very easy to for- give, is one of the most natural and captivating boy-characters in recent fiction. Mr. Norris has given us more striking books than this, but none more charmingly human.
The Australian authoress who chooses to be known as " Tama " is possessed of many endowments which go a long way towards the achievement of success in fiction. The mere writing in her work, though not faultless, is capable and workmanlike ; she knows how to tell a story, and she has a good eye for character. Not Counting the Cost has in it the makings of a good novel, and therefore it is a real pity that the writer has deliberately spoiled it for the majority of the better class of readers by the introduction of narrative expedients which are not only unpleasant in themselves, but are altogether wanting in imaginative inevitableness. Eila Croft, the one capable member of the Clare family, has been unhappily married in her girlhood to a man who is confined in an asylum as a hopeless lunatic, and " Tasma " evidently considers it quite natural and fitting that when a lover urges his illicit snit and offers to buy Eila's honour by offering to place her family beyond the reach of want, she should mentally discuss the proposition as if it were something of no more importance than the purchase of a new bonnet. True, Mrs. Frost is represented as being an " emancipated " young person, but she is also represented as a woman of pure and wholesome instincts, and yet there is no revolt of nature against the wooing of the deformed creature for whom she has no feeling even approximating to love. The main objection to the situation is not that it is repellent, but that it is altogether devoid of representative value,—that it flatly contradicts our perception of the ordinary truth of things. And it must be noted that " Tasma " has not the poor excuse of the literary weakling who is powerless to produce any effects save by the choice of some ugly or morbid theme. In the early Australian chapters and in the portion of the book devoted to the struggles of the Clare family in Paris, " Tama " shows how truthfully, how vividly, and how pleasantly she can confer literary interest upon the trivial details of homely and
healthy life. If she would only abjure a very uncomfortable and unedifying kind of casuistry, for which she has no special gift, her work might be wholly agreeable.
Marjory's Mistake is not altogether uninteresting, but it is hardly one of Miss Adeline Sergeant's most successful novels. What is mainly lacking in it is delicacy in the adjustment of emphasis. Miss Sergeant not only uses a big brush, but she uses it constantly, the effect being that the "values" of her work are entirely destroyed. Marjory's mistake was the very common mistake of marrying the wrong person ; and in endeavouring to accentuate the difference between the man who is and the man who ought to have been her husband, Miss Sergeant manages to deprive both of essential vitality. Felix Hyde is not so much a man as a disorganised bundle of the cardinal virtues, and Archie Severne's meannesses, cowardices, treacheries, and miscel- lan,lus scoundrelisms are so heaped up that we soon cease to bi;eve either in him or in them. Marjory, too, the im- pulsive, reckless artist nature, who in the early chapters is sketched with a good deal of vigour and distinctness, becomes more and more shadowy as the story proceeds, and when we part from her at the close of the third volume she seems not the Marjory whom we knew, chastened by experience and sorrow, but a different person altogether. To say that Marjory's Mistake is a laboured book, and then to add the time-honoured criticism that it would have been better if the author had taken more pains with it, may sound like an Irish bull ; but we are not afraid that our readers will misunder- stand the true inwardness of the verdict, for to be rightly laborious is one thing and to be laboured is something very different.
The harmless, necessary critic of fiction is, this month, a per- son to be condoled with by all sympathetic souls. He is irritated by reading such a book as Marjory's Mistake, because he feels that its writer is doing herself less than justice; he is still more irritated by reading Deb o' Mally's, because he feels that Mrs. George Corbett is altogether devoid of the qualifications essential to the production even of the fiction of commerce as distinguished from the fiction of literature. Deborah Pendle- bury is a Lancashire mill-girl, the illegitimate daughter of a man of high military rank. From the blue blood in her veins spring high and victorious ambitions ; for in an incredibly short space of time we find her in " smart " London society, mixing on terms of equality with her new acquaintances, and receiving a proposal of marriage from her own father, who is, of course, ignorant of the tie between them. The colloquy between Deborah and the newly-made peer, upon whom she pours the vials of her indignation and contempt, is quite in the manner of the old transpontine melodrama, and as it is over- heard by the villain of the piece, he makes a use of his accidentally acquired knowledge which in due time brings about the dgnonement of a singularly absurd story. Deb o' Mally's has, of course, no claim to be criticised as literature, and it is even below the not very elevated average of the circulating-library novel.
The fiction of Mr. Henry James, like that of Mr. George Meredith—to which it shows an increasing resemblance— always inspires us with a certain feeling of melancholy. Both Mr. Meredith and Mr. James are men of very remarkable talent ; but some "imp of the perverse" impels them to employ that talent in such a way as to achieve a minimum of legitimate effectiveness. There is no reason why a writer who has something to express or to render should necessarily choose the narrative form ; but the writer who does choose it should surely give to his work the characteristic qualities of narration—simplicity, lucidity, and a natural movement of incident—and these are the qualities to which Mr. James seems not merely indifferent, but hostile. We do not ignore what is excellent in his work—its fastidiousness, its urbanity, its subtlety, its brilliance—but we do miss the special excellence of fiction. We might say a dozen things in praise of such a story as " The Coxon Fund," and might then, without any real inconsistency, go on to declare it one of the least praiseworthy stories with which we are acquainted, for the simple reason that it violates all the natural traditions of narrative art. Perhaps "The Death of the Lion" is even more disappointing still, because the mere motif is so fresh and excellent, and we feel how strong and pathetic a narra- tive might have been made of the last weary, persecuted days of the man of genius, if the story, so to speak, had been
left to tell itself. Of course there is a slovenly and inartistic way of letting a story tell itself, but there is an artistic way also. It is, indeed, the way adopted consciously or uncon- sciously by all the great masters of narration ; but we fear that Mr. James has too much literary self-consciousness ever to adopt it.
There is no want of simplicity and directness in the literary manner of Mr. R. H. Sherard's Jacob Niemand, which reminds one somewhat of the plain, businesslike methods of Defoe and the eighteenth-century novelists. The story of the attempted atonement of a released convict for the crime which had separated him from society for twenty years, is perhaps a little far-fetched, but the matter-of-fact way in which it is told serves to disguise its inherent improbability; and through two-thirds of the book we read not merely with interest, but with imaginative conviction. Jacob Niemand's behaviour during his mysterious residence with the widow and family of the man he has ruined, is admirably imagined ; we seem to witness every stage of the relaxation of the physical and mental muscles cramped by the confinement and solitude of half a lifetime—every new approximation to harmony with an environment which is half-painfully, half-pleasantly unfamiliar. The patron of the circulating libraries who runs through so many novels a week simply to kill time agreeably, will find this portion of the story full of interest, but he may fail to note the fine imaginative insight which is really the thing that makes it interesting. It is the critic's duty to repair this omission; but, unfortunately, it is not less his duty to lament the clumsy, melodramatic, and perfectly incredible denoue- ment which spoils a novel the first half of which is so well thought out and so carefully executed. It is difficult to account for the lapse, except on the supposition that Mr. Sherard became tired of his task, and ceased to have any desire concerning it, save the desire to bring it to a speedy conclusion. True, the first half of Jacob Niemand sufficed to make it readable, but we think it might have been something more.
An entertaining essay might be written in answer to the question why old maids—we mean, of course, old maids of the right sort—receive so many confidences, especially with regard to what used to be called " affairs of the heart," than are bestowed upon middle-aged unmarried persons of the other sex. There is, we think, no doubt about the fact, and perhaps it is best accounted for by the sup- position that the old bachelor is assumed to be single by choice, and therefore to lack the sympathy which such con- fidences demand, while the elderly spinster may be credited with tender reminiscences which keep alive in her something of the romance of youth. The old maid of Miss Lilian Bell's charming little volume is one of these mother-confessors, for her love-affairs are not her own, but those of a dozen or a score of lovers of both sexes, who seem instinctively to recog- nise in her a guide, philosopher, and friend. The book is not exactly a novel, for it lacks narrative continuity, nor, on the other hand, is it a mere collection of stories, for the love-affair of one couple has a way of running into that of another couple in such a fashion as to confer upon the whole chronicle a certain amount of interest. It is rather a delightful sketch of a company of young men and maidens agitated by the emotions of the pairing season of life whose portraits, as painted by Miss Bell, bear out the contention of M. Bourget that novelists are enamoured of the passion of love not alto- gether for its own sake, but because it is the one passion which renders visible the finer shades of temperament and character. Miss Bell is an American writer whose work has that graceful light-handedness in which our Transatlantic kinsfolk are, so far, immeasurably our superiors, and her present book is as winning in substance as in style.
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