NOVELS OF THE WEEK.*
WE have had to wait some years for a successor to The Lost Stradivarius—that excellent ghost-story, finely imagined and told with rare distinction of style—but Moonjleet is such an ad- mirable achievement in a somewhat different line that Mr. Falkner may surely be forgiven for his leisurely method of pro- duction. It argues no small sense of artistic responsibility in an author who leads off with a conspicuous success to avoid the example of those popular authors who, on establishing a market for their wares, cease to create, and take to manufacture. Moon- fleet, though it is written with the utmost simplicity of style, is not the sort of book that can be "knocked off" in this per- functory fashion. This fascinating ease of narrative is not attained without the expenditure of a great deal of "elbow- grease," to use Stevenson's phrase. Evidences of curious and recondite learning, so artistically employed as never to seem pedantic, may be found in every chapter. Then again, the story has the qualities—denied to modern machine- made fiction—of "atmosphere " and, above all, of vision, which immensely reinforce the impressiveness and pic- turesqueness of a tale of adventure. It is an easy thing to label your story " 1757 " ; it is another thing to carry your readers back, or, at any rate, to transport them clean out of their present environment, and in this refreshing emancipation from the tyranny of actuality, in this magical power of putting the clock back, Mr. Falkner need fear comparison with no living author, unless it be the Mr. Shorthouse who wrote John Inglesant. As for the story of Moonjleet, it comes much under the same category as Treasure Island,—that is to say, it is suited to any reader from about sixteen upwards. It is a tale of the gentlemen of the contraband on the Dorsetshire coast in the middle of the last century, brimful of fearful joys, unexpected sensations, unfamiliar horrors, and midnight mysteries. We will not discount the pleasure that lies in store for the reader by disclosing the plot, which deals with the Nemesis attaching to the discovery of a fatal diamond. It is enough to say that in Moo) fleet Mr. Falkner has given ns what in the present writer's opinion is the best tale of fantastic adventure since Stevenson's pen was prematurely laid aside.
The fastidious disinclination of some modern novelists to incur the possible imputation of plagiarism drives them to many strange expedients. Holding—incorrectly, as we believe—that all normal subjects are used up, or at least are incapable of fresh or interesting treatment, they betake them- selves to the sphere of the abnormal, to the exploration of the charnel-house of humanity, to the study of mental, moral, and even physical degeneracy. A very remarkable in- stance of the choice of the last-named theme is forthcoming in The Open Question, by C. E. Raimond, a novel in which a rare and delicate talent of portraiture, a keen sense of beauty, a vein of refined humour, and a fund of sympathetic observa- tion are devoted to the consideration of the problem of the intermarriage of first-cousins. The materials are chosen with the utmost care. the sympathy of the reader in the prota- gonists of this domestic tragedy is enlisted at the outset and retained throughout in spite of the ever-present sense of impending disaster. For the cousins in question come of a used-up stock, they represent the concentrated essence of a single family's tainted strain, but—and here we cannot help thinking that the novelist, to enhance the pathos of the situation, has run counter to the experience of the physiologist—they sum up in themselves all the personal charm and intellectual energy of their race. The chapters which tell of the life-history of the heroine up to her first meeting with the hero, and of the early boyhood of the hero himself, are fascinating in the best sense of the word. But as their destinies converge the fascination exerted by the narrative is akin to that caused by the sight of some deadly struggle, the fatal issue of which the spectator is powerless • (L) Moonflert. By J. Meade Panther. London. Edward Arnold.—(2.) The Open ,Question. By C. K. Haimond. London : W. Heinomann.—(3.) Doctor Therne. By H. Rider Hazgard. London : Losgmans and 0o.—(4.) Thecta's Vow, By A. Ge'lenge. London Smith, Elder, and 0o.—(5.) A Desperate Voyage. By E. F. Knight. London: John Milne.—(5.) The Optimist. By Herbert Morrt h. Laudon: C. A. Pearson.—(7.) A Romance of the First Consul. By Matilda Melling. Authorised Translation by Anna Mnlboe. London: W. Heinemann.—(3.) The Rainbow Feather. By Fergus Hamo. Loudon, D gl:v, Long. and Co.—(9.) I am the King. By Sheppard Stevens. bondon Gay and Birl.—(10.) The Master of Craigens. By A. D. Hitch'e. L u,:ou • 0, phent, Anderson, and Ferrier.—(11.) Angel: a Cornish Romance. By Mrs. Bondi. London :112)'gby. Long, and 0o.-12.) Bachelorland, By H. B. Warren Bell. Lomion Great Richards.—(13.) The Lost Provinces. He Louis Tra .y. London C. A PearAon.—(14.) A Red Bridal. By Will am Wa.IA41!. Lu,con: C.iatt, and Wiedus. to avert. Siegmund and Sieglinde and their elemental passion may be accepted as representative of primitive culture ; but Siegmund and Sieglinde modernised and neuroticised are less defensible subjects for romantic treatment. The concluding chapters, after the death of the grim old grandmother—the old lady of whom her son happily said : " She belongs to the heroic age; she was born before we began to split hairs and have nerves instead of nerve "—are painfully morbid, though the handling is marked by unfailing tact. Still, we are old- fashioned enough to hold that even the brilliant results achieved do not justify the choice of such a theme. The question at issue is better left to the family doctor. And yet the book is not of the proselytising order ; the double tragedy is logically contained in the premisses ; it is not a pamphlet like Mr. Rider Haggard's Doctor Theme, a romance avowedly designed to confute the conscientious objector, in which laudable undertaking we heartily wish the author success, though we cannot convince ourselves of the efficacy of the method adopted. There was a time when the scope of the novel was too exclusively confined to fall-dress functions. Nowadays we run to the other extreme, and degrade it to the level of a literary maid-of-all-work.
Thecla's Vow, a posthumous novel from the pen of Antonio Gallenga, in spite of its old-fashioned sentiment and some- what undistinguished portraiture, is redeemed from the com- monplace by its strange plot, and by the author's familiarity with that stormy phase of Italian politics which forms the setting of his romance. Thecla Barozzi, the daughter of an Austrian [P Hebrew] Baron named Wertheim, a banker in Milan, and of an Italian mother marries, while little more than child, a wealthy financier in Parma. They live most happily for two years, but one day a handsome young Hungarian officer visits the house, and Thecla's ingenuous appreciation of her guest's admiration rouses her husband's jealousy. He tells her that she can never hold her tongue, whereon she vows that he shall never reproach her on that score again, and deliberately remains dumb for the rest of her life,—a period of thirty years. A more unpromising or depressing theme it would be difficult to imagine, but there is logic as well as romance in Mr. Gallenga's treatment of it. The story suffers from the immense period of time over which it is stretched, from the inartistic manner in which fragments of historical information are interpolated into the narrative, and from a certain inconsistency in the portraiture of the husband, who is by turns long-suffering and callous. Thecla's sudden development of remarkable literary talent, again, strikes us as extremely improbable, while there is a strange discrepancy—at any rate in the early part of the story — between the cruelty of her revenge on her husband and her submissive, and even affectionate, demeanour in all other respects. At the same time, there are certain curious features in the narrative, so unlikely to have been invented, that we cannot rid ourselves of the impression that this curious domestic tragedy may have been founded on the vengeance actually wreaked in real life on a jealous husband by an indignant and innocent wife.
Mr. E. F. Knight's personal experiences furnish an excellent guarantee of his ability to render justice to his sensational title, and be has not disappointed expectation in A Desperate Voyage. The amazing adventures of Henry Carew by sea and land—especially among the land-crabs—are told with immense spirit, and make it abundantly clear how much more interesting a villain can be made of a defaulting solicitor when he happens to have taught himself navigation.—The Optimist belongs to the class of mildly interesting novels which, though pos- sessing hygienic value to a reviewer surfeited with unrestful realism, may prove somewhat insipid to the normal reader with a healthy appetite and unjaded palate. The optimist of the story is an amiable country parson, whose daughter, with heroic constancy, waits for her lover until he is released after undergoing five years' penal servitude for forgery. This magnanimity is not emulated by the repentant forger's implacable father. But the father is a Baronet, and the Baronet of fiction is capable de tout.—Dr. Geor0 Brandes, the Shakespearian scholar, who acts as sponsor for A Romance of the First Consul, testifies to the e•
i haustive nature of the historical studies on which t is
founded, and eulogises the "fresh, almost naive, poesy "and " beautiful enthusiasm" by which it is animated. For our selves, we have found this imaginary portrait of a youni7 and high-born heiress of the Vendee, hypnotised by the magnetic personality of Bonaparte into the desertion of her affianced husband, complacently accepting the position of a Royal mistress, and finally drowning herself when a rival appears on the scene, lacking in the dignity of a true tragedy.
The Rainbow Feather is a fair specimen of Mr. Fergus Bume's robustly sensational method. Tne notion of a man who started out with the intention of murdering his fickle sweetheart, was seized with a trance when he was about to execute his fell design, and found, on coming to, that the lady was dead, is decidedly original, and naturally gives rise to a good many complications. Suspicion attaches to no fewer than five persons. Mr. Fergus Hume is an adept at mystification, and, to borrow a metaphor from the three-card trick, very few readers will be able to " spot " the knave.—I am the King, which is further described as the "account of some happenings in the life of Godfrey de Bersac, Crusader-Knight," is a pleasant tale enough, but suffers from the laborious pseudo- archaic dialect in which it is written. "Beshrew me, I am no cockloach," remarks the hero in one passage, and a footnote is appended to prevent ns mistaking " cockloach " for " cock. roach." On another page he says that he was "so totty " that he could not stand.—There is a somewhat uncom- promisingly Kailyardish accent about the opening of The Master of Craigens, but the South ron who perseveres will find that Mr. Ritchie is merciful in the use of his Doric—which, after all, is less trying than the Wardour Street English we have quoted above — and tells his tragical romance of the Vale of Kelvin fifty years ago in a manner which certainly deserved a more sympathetic illustrator.— In Angel, Mrs. Ensell undertakes the somewhat difficult task of rehabilitating the character of a bridegroom who disappears on his wedding day. It turns out, however, that there were extenuating circumstances, and poetic justice is impartially rendered to both characters. Amy Verschoyle "picks up" a Lord and castle in Scotland, and Robert Howard is elevated to an earldom. This is a readable, if occasionally a rather ridiculous, melodrama.—Mr. Warren Bell's Bachelorland ought to have been called " The Temple Foundling." Margot Prince, the foundling in question, who is discovered under circumstances reminding one of a Gilbert and Sullivan opera, is adopted by the Master, and grows up to be the torment and delight of her godfather and lover. Mr. Bell has a pleasant vein of humour, and his fantasy is agreeably com- pounded of sentiment and fooling. What is more, his fun is honest enough to have satisfied Martin Luther, who said that "Christians should not entirely flee from comedies." A cynical critic, however, has said that this only shows Luther never witnessed a " musical comedy."—Jerome Vansittart, the hero of The American Emperor, who after holding the Presi- dentship of France and restoring the Monarchy retired to his home in the Adirondacks, is again to the fore in The Lost Provinces. Returning to France on the outbreak of war with Germany, he not only brings about a Prussian Sedan, but negotiates a rectification of the frontier. Sequels are seldom successful, but in this instance Mr. Tracy's second Post- historic peep-show is a decided improvement on the first.— A Red Bridal is not so much a sequel as a supplementary volume to Mr. Westall's admirable romance, With the Red Eagle. His theme is once more "the story of Tyrol's heroic fight for God, Kaiser, and Fatherland," and by a deviation from precedent the heroine is not the gallant narrator's betrothed, but his sister. Enthusiasm for his subject, com- bined with knowledge of the ground and the history of the campaign, have enabled Mr. Weatall to rival his best achieve- ments in a sphere of fiction where he has already won well- merited distinction.
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