A Woman with a Past, by Mrs. Berens (Chapman and
is a very unpleasant novel, showing the writer to have an intimate know- ledge of certain social "circles," but full of millinery and slang, and vulgarity of sentiment. There are two heroines. The one, Brenda, is an actress who is all that is good, but is yet subjected to certain odious attentions from tipsy gentlemen, and to worse than vulgar language from her landlady. Of the other, Melanie, it is perhaps enough to say that on one occasion, "the cut of her square body was irreproachable, and the masterly elegance of her toilette, covered with a profusion of delicate real Valenciennes, struck a despairing chord throughout the room." This is of itself almost enough to stamp Melanie as an adventuress of a worse than the Becky Sharp type, who mistakes physical (the adjective is Mrs. Berens's) passion for love, and whose married life ends in a disreputable catastrophe. John Stanley, who marries Brenda and Melanie in succession, is a coward and weakling of the most intolerable description ; but Mrs. Berens might have spared even him the singularly horrible madness that is his punishment for his misdeeds. The best, and perhaps also the most improbable thing in this book, is the discovery at the close that the despised actress is the heiress to the Stanley property. Bat even this incident comes too late to redeem the story as a whole, and almost too late to give a touch of brightness to the lives of those who figure in it.
Previous page
