A TRIO OF NOVELS.*
THIS trio of novels is a curious illustration of the fact that freshness and liveliness in interest and character in novels do not depend on going far afield, or to the violent and exceptional for the subject; for the merit and interest of the trio are in inverse ratio to the distance of the scenes in which they are placed and the commonplaceness of life depicted. The Milners, which begins with murder and forgery, and rushes to South Africa for its scenes, is far inferior in freshness to Retri- bution, a short tale of Corsican life, with a vendetta and an attempted murder, which, again, is mach below Evelyn's Career, in which the scene is in London, without any violent or sensational episode at all. Indeed, it is a great tribute to • a.) Evelyn's Career. By the Author of " Dr. Edith Romney." London : Bentley and Son.—(2.) Retribution. By Philippe Tonnelli. London : Dean and Son.—(3.) The Miners: a South African Story, London : Chapman and Hall.
the advancing power of the authoress of Dr. Edith Romney, that she has been able to make a really interesting and readable story out of anything so hackneyed as a common-life version of Tennyson's Princess, with the difference that the heroine's aim is the regeneration of the slums, instead of the advance- ment of woman. The copy of the Princess is curiously exact in outline, from the baby-betrothal of the heroine to the breaking-off of her engagement while she is an enthusiast, and her falling back on her lover, as a pis-aller, when the enthusiasm breaks down,—not perhaps a very compli- mentary proceeding, from the lover's point of view. But though neither is the plot new, nor are the incidents of the " slumming " young lady who is going to destroy the slums by getting a dozen young women to dance and play, very novel—for has not Mr. Besant given her to us ad nauseam ?— yet the book is really readable. And it has this superiority over Mr. Besant's similar works, that at least the heroine finds out that she is mistaken, and that a Palace of Delight will not only not change the character of the East End, but will be itself a failure, and that something more than a little rose-water is necessary to revolutionise the slums. There are several well-drawn characters in the book,—Evelyn's grand- mother, Lady Cunningham, who has married for a title, and has brought her grand-daughter, the daughter of a ingsalliance, up to do the same, but has produced instead the agnostic and enthusiastic " slummer ;" the mis-allied mother, who has since married an unsuccessful chemist ; Evelyn's fashionable aunt, who takes up her niece's enthusiasm as a successful social " draw." Mr. Sam Chitty, a Socialist costermonger, but a failure at that, who goes down to Evelyn's country " home," expecting to loaf and drink all day, and is disagreeably sur- prised at finding he has to pretend to work under a gardener, is really very good. His speech as spokesman of the discon- tented refugees, when a rumour has spread that Evelyn's money has disappeared, is distinctly good :-
" Lady, we've a great complaint to make. We don't think none of us as we've been treated fair. We was led to believe as this was to be a place where the poor man was to get 'is rights and 'ave things made up to 'im. An' as things been fair and equal ? No. We've 'ad to work the same as servants, which is wot most of us never was before, an' we've been treated like inferiors, an' to keep us quiet we've 'ad amusements. We've 'ad amusements. It's all accordin' to your rich folks' notions—we're to be 'umoured a little so as not to think of the injustice of our position. The day's past for that sort of thing. We are thinkin'. And the sooner England makes up its mind to the fact that the People is thinkin', the better for it, or it'll be wakened pretty smartly by fire an' bloodshed to find the People is hactin' an' is its master."
The only adverse criticism we should pass on the characters is with regard to the extraordinary facility with which they change their religious views. Evelyn is an agnostic till she finds her proUges do not care about being reformed from above by tea and music, when she becomes a Christian ; while an atheistic shoemaker (who is an exaggerated character) becomes a Christian because his daughter runs away with Evelyn's private secretary. The hero, who, though the heir to a title and a princely fortune, is a successful cynical novelist, apparently retains his agnosticism even after his marriage with the now Christian heroine. We are left to conjecture whether she relapses, or he is converted, or they both have a bad time of it.
The Milners is, as a story, terrible stuff. It begins with a forgery and a murder, supposed to be committed by a young gentleman who, though the heir to an ancestral estate in Sussex, is yet a bank-clerk in a small country town, and who then buries himself in South Africa, where he makes a heap of money by writing articles for the English magazines and reviews. His sister is engaged to a young gentleman who, though the heir to a baronial estate in Scotland, is a doctor, apparently also in a country town. The story of the book is made to turn in part on letters being delivered to the sister by being placed in a book which is shut up, and other like devices by which the English postal delivery becomes the oddest method to prevent letters arriving at their destination. When the father sells his ancestral estate, owing to one of those unsuc- cessful law-suits which exist only in novels, a friend of his has no difficulty in getting him a lucrative sinecure at the Cape, and so the family are landed in South Africa. Here the writer seems fairly at home, and the description of the Hebron diamond-diggings, of Kimberley, and of an African farm, are interesting, and more or less graphic. But the authoress ought to learn that lack of ability in novel- writing is not made up for by an excessive display of piety, and that her characters are not made more lifelike by incessantly consoling themselves with and administering to each other long sermons on how thankful they ought to be that things are no worse, and that God will make everything all right in the end,—as the novelist, in fact, does.
The Corsican book consists of several short stories, of which the first, called " Retribution," is considerably the best, being a true Corsican story, with power, poetry, and pathos in it. The second is far the worst,—being, indeed, a bit of guide-book, with characters introduced in the hope (unrealised) of giving liveliness to it. The translation leaves something to be desired. In a high tragic tale, to make a brigand say, "They have killed my brother, the best of our lot," is somewhat bald ; while, " Oh, how glad I am that these Italians have had a sound beating, the wretches ! We are not going to let them treat us in that way without return- ing it with interest," sounds rather like a schoolboy's notion of an idiomatic version.
Previous page
