CURRENT LITERATURE.
a pity, that Mrs. Roche's style renders it difficult to feel an interest in her book. Her late husband, Mr. Alfred Roche, was the first Honorary Secretary to the Royal Colonial Institute, and. she dedicates to the institute what she calls the "first simple effort of her pen." If the effort were but "simple," no one would find fault with it, for Mrs. Roche can give useful information about a part of the world and a kind of life which are among the actual and stirring in- terests of the present time. But it is the very reverse of simple ; it is full of would-be wit, of flippant familiarity, of the indefinable bad-taste that is to a style what perpetual simpering is to a countenance. Here is a sample of Mrs. Roche's delicate wit, when she describes the voyage out :—" Duly represented was the orthodox and very gentleman-like
middle-aged beau, and the younger ditto—in that fluffy and callow state of manhood which always move use to extreme pity. The younger only got ' inninga ' when the older hand had unguardedly come en deck without due application of that 'wash which is not a dye,' or had that unbecoming greenish hue born of sea-sickness, and which no cosmetique can conceal. Whether you are going to the Transvaal or not, or if only to the Cape or Natal, and are given to qualms and flit tation, as you must get through that frisky and most uproarious Bay of Biscay, take my advice,—keep to your berth until the bout be over, and you can, with healthful tints restored, break a fair lance for your lady's favour, temporary or otherwise, with Tones, minor, whose digestion neither winds nor waves can upset." The quality of the author's wit is never superior to the foregoing sample, and the quantity of it is dis- tressingly profuse ; it hops, skips, and jumps about her pages, getting in the way of the facts for which one searches them with pro- voking obtrusiveness. Not until the party has left Pieter Maritz- burg, and is really off on the "trek," is there anything worth reading in the hook; and unhappily one loses one's temper with the writer much before that desirable point has been attained. Even then Mrs. Roche will write about her "pen-Pegasus," and address this extraordinary jumble as" my steed." Her narrative conveys a most disagreable impres- sion of travelling in South Africa and of life in Pretoria. The horrible cruelty with which the beasts of burden are treated by the drivers would be enough to make one shun the place in which one would have to endure such spectacles, and to live among such human fiends, without the power to prevent or punish their deeds. The fertility and occasional beauty of the country are comparatively useless, such is the lack of population and of resources. Mrs. Roche gives some amusing sketches of the Kafirs, and of the animal life throughout the vast district which she traversed, with her invalid husband ; and if she would only have ab- stained from attempting to be funny, the hardships and anxieties of the journey, which ended very sadly, in Mr. Roche's death in that distant land, would have had a pathetic interest.
Previous page
