FICTION.
LAMORNA.•
THERM is a certain family resemblance between Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick's novels, in so far that she has a predilection for heroines who have come down in the world and are thrown on their resources, or are dependent on the precarious bounty of grudging relatives. On the various ways in which they extricate themselves from an irksome or mortifying position several of her best stories have been successfully built up. But we have no complaint to make against the author of Lamorna for adding yet another portrait to her gallery of high-spirited, self-reliant young women who refuse to be con- tent with the role of pensioner. It is a fine type of character, and Mrs. Sidgwick avoids the charge of monotony by the skill with which she varies the environment of her heroines. Lamorna Trent was the only child of a rather feckless artist who married a farmer's daughter, and on the early death of both her parents was taken charge of by her aunt, Mrs. Willoughby. Willoughby pare was a prosperous solicitor, and his wife a strong-willed, narrow-minded, ultra- conventional British matron, with no nerves and an iron constitution. At the opening of the story she had married off her two eldest daughters, and, though annoyed with Lamorna, already twenty-three, for refusing a dull but eligible suitor, was fully alive to the advantages of her remaining on in the household. For Lamorna easily earned her keep as secretary to her aunt, general errand-runner to the household, governess to the younger children, and com- panion and mentor to her wayward cousin Pansy, a mutinous but alluring young woman, whose life was spent in violating the code of Onslow Gardens. To the great relief of
e Lamorna. By Mrs Alfred Sidgwick. London : Methuen and Co. [68.]
her parents, Pansy becomes engaged to an altogether admirable young man named Floyd, but Floyd has to go off on business to South America for eight months, and this enforced absence and Lamorna's unexpected inheritance of £4,000 from an uncle furnish Pansy with ample opportunities for fulfilling her ambition—" to ride a rainbow for an hour, even if I come to smash." Lamorna loves her cousin in spite of her tiresome ways, and, by way of repaying the Willoughbys' bounty, offers to take Pansy to Italy at her own cost.
It is with the disastrous consequences of Lamorna's generosity that the plot is chiefly concerned. Pansy has her rainbow ride, and comes to smash, but the brunt of the burden is borne, as always, by the long-suffering Lamorna, since an insufferably odious prig—a type which Mrs. Sidgwick has a positive genius for portraying—trades on his know- ledge of Pansy's guilty secret, and tries to blackmail Lamorna' into marrying him as the price of his silence. Of course Wigan, the despicable, flute-voiced dilettante, does not succeed in his design, because there were limits to Lamorna's powers of self-sacrifice. Besides, she was already engaged to an artist, a capital fellow as well as a rising portrait-painter, and, finally, it is not Mrs. Sidgwick's way to desert her heroines. She gives her villains plenty of rope, but never allows them a perfectly free hand. The two girls are admirably contrasted —Lamorna with her sane mind in a sane body, and Pansy, a thoroughly spoiled, selfish, and yet attractive minx ; the minor characters are drawn with cameo-like distinctness; the dialogue is alert, witty, and natural, and the narrative marked by that terse vivacity which makes Mrs. Sidgwick's style a perfect model for all light-horse novelists afflicted with sloppiness.
In fine, Mrs. Sidgwick has once more furnished us with a first-rate entertainment. Our only criticism is to express surprise that Lamorna should have combined the best domestic virtues with an artistic temperament. It is a charming com- bination, but exceedingly rare in real life.
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