5 MARCH 1870, Page 17

THE SCAPEGOAT.*

WE have here a charming little book to look at, delightful to hold in the hand, and exactly the thing to slip into one's pocket, if only one wanted to read it. The publisher and the binder are much to be praised, and there is a sweet solemnity about the out- side which goes to the heart at once ; scarlet, with a broad black border, and the word " Scapegoat " enshrined within it ; our hand rested reverently on the book for a moment before we ventured to introduce the sacrificial paper-knife, and when we gazed upon the title-page the sense of sacredness became almost painful ; we have now got over that first impression, and are able to define that title-page as a cross between an obituary notice and a tombstone. Considered as a tombstone, the inscription is simple and touching ; again, within a broad black border—this time in the shape of an Oxford frame—are apparently the name and description, in sacred scarlet, of the deceased, with the stonecutter's address at the foot. Pity that the words "In Two Volumes. Vol. I." profane the sacred tablet and dispel the illusion ; but we search in vain for the cause of this funereal style, unless it is that hope is dead in the lion- hearted autobiographer, for the Scapegoat is not dead, as the author is the Scapegoat, and Leo is not dead, for the author is Leo, and at the end of the book the author—who thus unites in his own person both Leo and the Scapegoat—distinctly explains that he is still living. Seriously, however, we do not think it good taste to use the symbols of death as claptrap to attract the attention and excite the imagination of the novel-reading public ; more especially when the book is of so essentially unsacred a character, excepting as to its last chapter, where we have a transition, pain- fully because ludicrously abrupt, from youth and high spirits and the vortex of fashionable London life, to disease, poverty, remorse and melancholy, without friends and without hope, in a distant and deep retirement.

The story purports to be the autobiography of a young Guards- man, and is nominally written with a purpose, namely, to suggest to fast young men to "look to the end ; " here, at least, is no hypocrisy to be found ; there is no talk of the hereafter, but an honest selfishness, regretting only the utter failure to secure a comfortable life when the wild oats are sown. But even the unambitious object proposed is scarcely attained ; first, because the last chapter is too unmistakably written in order to give a serious meaning to the book—altogether at variance with any of its previous teachings—and thus enlist the sympathy and appro- bation of the respectable public who might otherwise shun with horror the revelations of an unrepentant roué ; and secondly, beeauge young rakes are not much troubled by anticipations of Nemesis overtaking them in the shape of an anonymous letter in the very moment of victory. And our Guardsman does not seem to • The Scapegoat. By Leo. London: Chapman and HalL

perceive that the still greater disaster than the loss of property and position—namely, the loss of health and, with it, the power to retrieve, at least, his character—is the result in no way of his pre- vious irregular courses; and that his young successors will not fail to separate the railway accident,—the cause of his miserable condi- tion,—froin the legitimate consequences of his own folly, and thus the warning loses nearly all its point. Should this story indeed be read by men in the position of its real or supposed author—and we are pretty confident that it will not interest any others—it can do little else than sanction and encourage the sort of life it describes. ' It is true that the hero gets into many scrapes, but he gets out of them in a wonderful way, enjoying the excitement meanwhile, and accompanied by marvellous good fortune and the highest spirits till the very last. His adventures remind us of a remedy we once heard of for a refractory patient who required exercise. He was introduced into an empty room, and soon found the floor growing hot ; hopping about, first on one foot and then on another, was his only resource, and was accompanied by many oaths and much grimacing, but he came out with a furious appetite and a luxu- rious feeling of unaccustomed health.

We are not very intimate with the tenour of a Guardsman's life, nor indeed with that of any fashionable man at all ; but we think we discover internal evidence that the book is, in the main, what it assumes to be,—an account of the author's own adventures ; and on this theory of a military authorship, the defective style, which is often very clumsy, and the frequent lapses from correct grammar, &c., are easily understood, as is also the naive admission that Whyte Melville is " one of our greatest living authors," and his Digby Grand "the most engrossing book he ever read." That fact has been dressed up and not improved by fiction is pretty clear from the improbable nature of some of the escapades ; but whether the incidents have the semblance of reality or betray the unskilful creator of fiction, they are alike profoundly uninteresting to us. Except that the hero takes part in all that happens, there is scarcely any thread to connect the various adventures ; and when any glimpse is revealed of family life that promises something a little better than the mere diary of a devotee to pleasure, we find it strictly limited to the conventional side of it presented at balls, dinner-parties, and the like.

In both volumes, but particularly in the first, our hero skips about, con amore, from balls to steeplechases, from the boudoirs of married ladies to race-courses, from green-rooms to the hunting- field, from gaming-tables to a stand-up fight,—to use his own language, getting sadly bruised, but always coming up to time for the next round ; the haunts of money-lenders, the boxes of private four-in-hands, the Star and Garter, Rotten Row in the afternoon, the streets at midnight, billiard-tables, smoking-rooms, &c., all, in turn, witness his reckless proceedings, and triumphant or dole- ful bearing ; in fact, we are amazed at the hypocrisy of the solemn title-page as a vestibule to such a hall of unlicensed plea- sure ; a harlequin pattern should have been substituted for the black border, and " Scapegrace" instead of Scapegoat should have appeared therein as the title. The second volume is somewhat better ; there is more of connected narrative in it, more of the country, and hunting, and shooting, and leas of the town and race-course.

We were much amazed, on arriving at the thirteenth chapter, to find an expectation on the part of the author of "fair readers ;" we should be surprised to learn that any ladies worthy of the name had not long before laid down the book, nauseated with the same- ness and painful abundance of the viands provided—for love- making, horses and gambling compose the feast—and indignant at the way in which they are spoken of ; they will scarcely like to be described in the same terms as those in which an equipage in the Park might be eulogized, as "the best turned-out women in all London ;" or to be told, without preface, "You darling ! how I love you!" or to hear that in waltzing the author finds "an enor- mous charm in a little head redolent of rose-water or scented soap." But even birds of his own feather will not much rejoice in his book ; his descriptions are tame and confused ; his accounts of races, hunts, fights, beta, &c., are more lacking in interest than any we ever remember reading; there is none of the thrill and excitement which is so easilyraised in the human mind when close competition is described, however feeble the spirit of partizanship may be, so that there be only some excuse, however trifling, for taking a definite side. The "run" at Melton, described in the twenty-ninth chapter, is perhaps the best of the sporting scenes, and of course the hero is the only one in at the death, and secures the for's brush and other appendages five minutes before the second arrival on the ground. Again, the sudden transitions from one subject to another, and the heartless way in which they are sometimes unexpectedly abandoned, must be trying even to young Guardsmen, who probably will not be very exigeant. Over night, for instance, the hero introduces us to a most lovely girl—the Lady Lula, the heroine of the story—and they are to meet again the next day, but the following chapter ignores the subject altogether, and begins with "the season went on, with its balls," &c. ; this chapter, however,—in the middle of which two years are skipped—brings the hero through all his happiness with Lula, and ends with his summary expulsion, by her parents, from her abode, which he felt so deeply, that he "somehow reached home," walking "as if blind," and for" thirty hours lay more or less insane ;" nevertheless, two pages further on he has quite forgotten our interest in his despair and recovery, and says he took a little house, and adds, "What fun I have had in that little house !—what dinners it quatre !—what suppers!"— and then proceeds to a racing "spec."

We do not know whether the Scapegoat first came out in some periodical, but we cannot explain on any other hypothesis than that of having to produce a chapter on a given day, the details— perfectly unconnected with the story—of a pantomime rehearsal; we scarcely think an appreciative public will call for a second edition, but should it do so, we recommend Leo to exclude from it this perfectly unmeaning parenthesis. Considering that the burden of our author's song is that the doings of fashionable men are wrong and dangerous, it is somewhat inconsistent of him to endorse the idea—so long exploded—that men and women in the busy ranks of society are uncultivated boors ; he introduces Man- chester millionaires who are unpresentable ; the gentlemen innocent of H's, the ladies ugly and preposterously dressed ; and because the husband of one of the five ladies, to whom, in turn, his vows and afternoons are devoted, is a banker, he is represented as a shy and spiritless non-entity, and is dubbed, with singular inappro- priateness, "Mr. Molasses."

Having weakly succumbed, to some homceopathic extent, to the Artfully pathetic denouement, we are loath to conclude without one -word of commendation, and therefore beg to signify that wherever Lady Lula appears she is simple, natural, and loveable, and that we are very sorry for her ; and furthermore, that there is an amusing anecdote at the end of the first volume ; and one clever remark at the beginning thereof which has our fullest sympathy ; —"getting out of bed when dead tired," says our author, "always reminds me -of tearing a plant up by the roots."