AN ETHICAL CONTRAST IN NOVELS.*
A Bachelor's Blunder is in many respects an inferior book to My Friend Jim, from the same pen, which, to say the least, threatens to become too prolific. Neither in style nor in charac- terisation is it so remarkable. It contains nobody so super- latively wicked as Hilda, Lady Bracknell. Bat, on the other hand, there is more of plot-interest and less of sub-Thackerayan sarcasm in it. Without being sensational—for the attempted murder of Dick Herbert by his morbid-minded protege, Jacob. Stiles, and the subsequent suicide of the would-be assassin, look like tragedies not enacted on the stage, bat heard of as having been transactedbehind the scenes or at the wings—it is a well-told story, with a strongly marked plot. Above all things, it teaches a sound moral. To be sure, what Mr. Norris terms a " bachelor's blunder "—it might as well have been termed a girl's blunder, or a wife's blunder—need not have occurred at all, and Mr. Norris might have been saved the writing of his book. If Dick Herbert, had been quite as candid about his own feelings towards Hope Lefroy when he married her as he invariably was about other people, if he had not pretended to be a friend when he was in reality a lover, and if Hope, shortly after marriage, had been equally candid on the subject of her sentiments towards her husband, they would probably have had a year more of wedded happiness—in the true, as distinguished from the conventional sense—than they actually had. In spite, or on account of this, Mr. Norris has, in A Bachelor's Blunder, produced a story the plot of which is at least as remarkable as anything else in it, and which most honest readers will say that they like better than any portrait in it, however Norrisian in its finish. Mr. Norris has sketched a good plot before now; but if we remember aright—no such easy matter when one thinks of the rapidly increasing list of his works—he has never produced a plot which is at once so good in itself, and ends so pleasantly, and without a phrase suggestive of the everlasting vanitas vanitatunt.
One is, perhaps, too much inclined, when reading a novel by Mr. Norris, to look for Thackerayan characters and Thackerayan sermonisings, cat down, trimmed, and made natty to suit the taste of the present day. On the whole, A Bachelor's Blunder recalls Thackeray less than any of Mr. Norris's previous works. There is an air of George Warrington, however, about it. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that the characteristics of George Warrington are divided between two men. To Dick Herbert are given his sincerity and his English stoicism ; to Wilfrid Tristram, RA., his conjugal unhappiness, his kindness of heart, his occasional bearishness of manner. It is, perhaps, '-
accordance with the fitness of things that Tristram she,'" an be the good genius of Miss Hope Lefroy, the heroine oS.
, Blunder, and the daughter of a friend of his ow-, ..wtchelor
should give her good, though not quite palatable advice Hope Lefroy, a very attractive girl, whose portrait by Trieasm has appeared in the Academy, finds herself at the deatl, of her without er iftatohut a father sot eannn heiress, Or,ire s s,
as she and everybody else ,ei,,,oted, h
rather, she does not artist, she will make nothing more. It is then that Dick Herbert enters into her life. He is a connection of the Lefroys whom she has seen a good deal of, and rather likes, because of his un- conventional candour in all things,—likes, as the sequel shows, much more than she cares to confess to herself, and still less to him. He makes and repeats an offer to marry her as a "friend," and as such she finally accepts him. Of course he loves her, and equally of course she falls in love with him after marriage, —as she demonstrates in the most effectual manner by per- emptorily dismissing Bertie Canninghame, an old admirer and a silly military fortune-hunter, on his making a grotesque rather than dishonourable proposal to her. But for a little pride on both sides, Hope and her husband ought to have come to an understanding in the first volume. But Herbert goes to America to shoot "big game," and it is necessary for another marplot to put in an appearance. This is a sensitive and half- mad painter of the name of Jacob Stiles. Stiles bad been picked up, a waif, by Herbert in his youth, and made a man, a gentle- man, and an artist of. But a great gulf separates protector and protege. Not very long after Stiles has been taken up by Herbert, he forges his patron's name on a cheque to get out of a betting difficulty. Dick thrashes Jacob soundly, forgives him, continues to advance him in life, but never quite trusts him, or treats him with the old friendliness. Jacob is galled at this, and easily reaches the belief that Herbert, having treated him unjustly, is capable of rendering his wife also unhappy,—at all events, comes to the conclusion that Hope and Cunningham° are attached to each other, and would marry if Herbert were out of the way. So he pursues Dick to America, shoots him, and then commits suicide. But Herbert's wound is not fatal. His wife rashes across the Atlantic to him, and all misunder- standings are cleared ap. We have dwelt on the plot of A Bachelor's Blunder, because it is Mr. Norris's greatest success in that way, and because, as it is a good plot, it is pleasant to dwell upon. The leading characters have been already described, or have spoken for themselves. Of the others, a Mrs. Pierpoint, who is a bit of a manager and matchmaker, vexed with a tippling husband who is not, however, a vulgar drunkard, reminds one most of Mr. Norris's ordinary style of portraiture. Jacob Stiles is in some respects the most striking figure in this story, and perhaps also—although he suggests the morbidly sensitive and jealous poet, Vavasour, in Charles Kingsley's Two Years Ago—the most thoroughly original. It is a test of a good character that it is difficult to make up one's mind about it. We are not quite sure if Stiles was, as Herbert held, a liar and a sneak, or a mis- understood man, the twist in whose character a little kindness would have removed. It is evident from the general tone of That Other Person, that its author would have little objection to give it as an alter- native title, after the manner of Mr. Norris, A Wife's Blunder. Mrs. Hunt is clearly of opinion that Mrs. Josephine Daylesford would have saved herself a great deal of unhappiness and her husband a vast amount of aimless travel—though how would the ecstasy in the end of the third volume have come in P—if she had never been jealous of "that other person," who is Miss Hester Langdale, a lady-artist who has been her husband's mistress. Now, we think Josephine's conduct open to objection, but on a different ground from this. From the ordinary ethical 'point of view, it would have been better if Josephine had made xistence of Hester Langdale as an element in Daylesford's life, tacle to her marriage with him, instead of becoming weakly jea of him after that irrevocable step had been ':aken, and misi;es.14,z an artist's model for "that other per- ao.." There is a ff°1.s deal of the Lord of Burleigh about Daylwford, and a good degl of the country girl whose love the Lord of Burleigh won is disguise, about Josephine. But that girl had discovered that she had only succeeded to a place in her pseudo-painter's affections which had been occupied by "another person," she would not have thought him worth living with, much less dying for. Then we observe that some critics have gone into ecstasies over Hester Langdale, one in par- ticular describing her as a "lovely soul." This must be pro- tested against as an abuse of words, if not of something more important. Unblemished purity of soul is the essence of moral loveliness, and that cannot be claimed for Hester Langdale. Having made this protest, however, we are all the freer to admit the ability which characterises That Other Person, and marks it out as in truth a really superior novel. But for the ability, indeed, which it reveals, it would not have been worth while to make the protest. It is written with great care, and there is not a single character in it to the drawing of which pains have not been devoted. The Treherne household—of which the pretty, socially ambitions, and finally successful Josephine is a member—with its pinched gentility and its struggle to make ends meet, is manifestly drawn from the life. The progress of the intimacy between Josephine and her lover, whose acquaintance she makes in a fog, is skilfully and yet naturally traced. The plot of the story is, as plots go, good of its kind, down even to the discovery by Josephine of the documents which establish the marriage of her husband's father and mother, and re- establish her own happiness. If Mrs. Hunt would after this but stick to homely souls, and leave dubiously " lovely " ones alone, her success in fiction would probably be as great as it would be unequivocal.
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