NOVELS OF THE WEEK.* MEL ATMEETON'S new novel, Senator North,
is a brilliant and interesting rather that a convincing achievement. The appeal which is made to the reader's sympathies is weakened by a mul- tiplicity of motives. By turns a novel of politics, a love story, and a study of racial prejudice, the book is too kaleidoscopic in struc- ture to rivet the reader's attention continuously. Another flaw in the book, from the point of view of the average male reader, is the disparity in age between hero and heroine, and the character and position of the former. Senator North is not merely a "magnificently ugly" man, he is precisely thirty- three years older than the beautiful and bewitching Betty Madison, the father of grown-up sons, and the husband of a valetudinarian wife who is not only a persona muta, but never appears throughout the novel. Worse still, though we hear a great deal of his personal magnetism and commanding individuality, he cannot be altogether acquitted of . a tincture of priggishness in his conversation and is destitute of the quality of charm. His political aspirations and ideals leave us cold, we are not greatly moved by the misrepresentation to which he is exposed by his attitude on the war with Spain, and we find it just a little hard to believe that so eminently respectable a person as this massive sexa- genarian could so far deviate from the paths of. correctitude as to engage in a protracted flirtation with so dangerously attractive a young woman as Betty Madison. Betty, it should be explained, is a much-wooed heiress, who, wearying of society and travel, determines to explore political society and hold a salon. The _net result of her exploration is that she falls in love with Senator North, whom she cannot marry, accepts Senator Burleigh, whom she does not love, and on the opportune death of Mrs. North from paralysis, jilts Burleigh for North. Betty is a very bright and audacious creature, but the romantic reader will never quite get over the fact that she throws herself at the head of a married man much more than double her age. By far the most striking and poignant episode in the book is that concerned with Harriet Walker, the illegitimate child by an octoroon of Betty's father, whom Betty befriends and educates, preserving the secret of her birth with fatal success from her cousin, Jack Emory. For Emory, who is a typical Southerner, marries Harriet privately, and on learning the truth as to her parent- age commits suicide, Harriet shortly afterwards drowning her- self. Mrs. Atherton's portrait of the beautiful but unhappy half-breed, with her abiding melancholy, her social arnbitions, her strange lapses into vulgar barbarism, and her fatal mendacity, is of painfully engrossing interest. It may, how- ever, be fairly objected that it is extremely unlikely, if only in view of the mystery of her past, that Emory should never have guessed her secret. Students of parallels will not fail to compare Mr. Howells's treatment of a somewhat similar case in one of his stories.
Mr. Baring-Gould, unlike most popular novelists, claims attention on other grounds than the mere volume of his literary output. For one thing, his novels have generally a geographical or geological sub-title—in the case of Winefred it is "A Story of the Chalk-cliffs "—a device which is fully justified by the important part invariably played in his stories by the landscape. Another remarkable, and at the same time welcome, feature of his books is his' audacious revolt against the tyranny of realism in regard to the reproduction of rustic speech. The proportion of simple to gentle in the dramatis persona of his novels is ten to one, yet he has never suc- cumbed to the passion for patois; his personages abstain severely from dialect and discourse in a style which, if occa- sionally somewhat pedantic for their station, has at least the sovereign merit of being understanded of the Cockney reader without the aid of a glossary. The scheme of the present story is highly artificial, but Mr. Baring- • (L) Senator North. By Gertrude Atherton. London : John Lane. Dal —(2.) Wtnefred. By S. BarIng.Gould. London : Methuen and Co. [Ga.]— (3.) The Shadow of Quong Lung, By Dr. C. W. Doyle. London : Archibald Constable and Co. Ds. 6d.]—(4.) Daughter of Witches. By Joanna E. Wood. London : Hurst and Blackett. (6s.]—(5.) The Autobiography of Allen 1.07718, Minister of Religion. By Alexander Macdougall. London : Fisher Unwin. Ds.]—(6.) Blood Tracks of the Bush. By Simpson Newland London : Gay and Bird. [6a.]—(7.) A Spider's Web. By Emilia Aylmer Gowing. London Whomas Burleigh. [2s. 61] picturesque treatment redeems this -drawback. A; priggish but impressionable young Oxford man -spending his holidays on the borders. -of-Dorsetshire and Devon, falls in love with a beautiful_ smuggler:a 'daughter, goes through a form of Marriage with her,and. then, being desperately afraid . PUblie opinion, avails hair:161f of 'wine irregUlarity 'in the Ceremony to desert wife and child fcir eighteen years: Mean- 'time he has provided for her wintsthrough a fellow-smuggler • of her father's, Civet- Dena:a:ferryman and the villain of the for priniCiees of his main blackens the woman's character and Contrives to delay any reconciliation. Winefred ii-remoVed from her mother -and brought Up as a lady—one -'of -the Most picturesque scenes is that in Which the mother,. uncouth and unkempt, forces her Way into an assembly at • Beth to have speech with her Child—and the ultimee reunion •• of the parents only takes place when Winefred's father is dying of cancer in the tongue which his wife had cursed. The portraits of the mother, a fierce Ishmaelite of a woman, and of the heroine, in whom the mutinous spirit takes a less aggressive forth, are handled in Mr. Baring-Gould's most characteristic vein. His work' May be-unequal, but it is never insipid or conventional, and though one may never meet his 'personages in real life, they ar& far more stimulating and cOnipaiiy" thin the' -Conscientioini - but depressing .photographs Of country folk, eneeniitericl in most contem- porary fiction: There is alieriyé. au el-ement of melcidrama in -Mr. Baring-Gonld'e Work, but,- as-iii the 'novels of the foreign writer Whom he 'most rerienablee, -Manrua Jokai, it is melo- drama mach nearer the sublime than the ridiculous. . . .
. Mr. Fernald in his -Chinatown, Stories dealt in fantastic wise with the amenities Of the Chinese quarter of San Francisco. Dr.-C. W. Doyle in The ,Shadow Of Quiing Lang is exclusively conoarried with'its seamy : The *central -figure, Quong Lung hiinself, a. etOut, beePeetaeled Chinaman, a graduate of Yale-end a barrister cif the Inner Temple, London, is a nionster .of *recleaned iiiiquity. Whatever his shadow falls on withers ; he deploy:1i the resources a modern Science to compass his evil etidr.-S4.,lie decoys hie -enemies into his private chair Of eleCtioentiaandrrehukei '-in'Arneriein.lady for her well meant and jnstifiales interference with his nefarious schemes in the 'diction, of '&11_1:Word don - and With the aid of a quota- - tiOn .from Cowper. Dt. Doyle disclaims all intention of writing that detestable . thing a book with a purpose; " but adds that ." if it should incidentally draw attention to the terrible Conditions of life of the slavein Chinatown, and if any amelioration of those conditions should ensue," he will feel that he has not written in vain. It seems to us that such . an aim—the awakening of public opinion to the hideous evils depicted in these pages—is the only possible justification for their publicatien. For the reek these stories May be con- fidently recommended to all amateurs . of the horrible, all desirous of a new thrill; all persons who derive satisfaction from luxuriating in academic and ineffectual sympathy. In a word so far. as English readers are concerned, we find it im- " possible, while admitting their poignancy" and power, to exclude them from the category of the gratuitous. '
. In A Daughter of -firitches-Miss Joanna Wood has written a book which. wetild. be 'very Charthing but for the blot of the unnaturally, unadulterated -wickedness of the .heroine. The • scene of the story is, New England, and' the surroundings and subsidiary characters_ are drawn With 'a 'delicate humour which , reminds one of Miss Wilkins Miss Temperance Tribbey, the , old Servant, .is s delightful figure with her long-suffering lever, *honk aim:5. keeps waiting any number of years because she will not leave the Lansing family ,' who are dependent on • her for all ..their comfort .' -.8nt:Yeahti,Ahe heroine, with her Cahn, statuesque beauty hiding the blackness of her heart, is really so Wiolted. in intention that she fails to he convincing. If _ elid..had.heen as bad as . she is painted. the reader feels certain that with her 'beauty and cleverness, she would have Managed to athlete more active evil. The most she does is to insist on, Sidney Martin, the delightful; dreamy hero, becoming • .pastor of the parish, in spite of his highly unorthodox views, . as the price of her hand. Certainly Vashti in:real lire would - - -hare dontrived -a. More impressive piece of wickedness- -than that. -The book is excellently written, and can be heartily recommended.
. Readers who send for a book with the imposing title of The Autobiography of Allen Lorne, Minister of Religion, have no grounds for surprise if theY find a good many seimons.luriging betvhsen the two covers. The author, Mr. 'Alexander Mac- - dangall, makes his hero, Allen Larne, reveal himself not only as a minister of religion, but' also as a first-class.prig. But readers who-like Scotch theology- will no doubt revel in the book. There are two 'young French ladies introduced as minor characters, one of Whom says to Mr. Lorne. playfully, Vat'en,.monsieur.". -The second person singular in French is full of pitfalls to the Anglo-Saxon. Mlle. Louise in the same sentence makes use of the pronoun " vous," so one is at a less to explain her slip.
There is a great deal of gore in Blood Tracks of the . Bush, and the characters spill it with very little compunction. But Nemesis follows, and the hero, who has two deaths and a- Ws)] desertion at his door, perishes in the last chapter at the hands of the deserted Mail, of whom he failed to make sure. The various adventures are recounted in a fairly lively strain, hilt the book is not specially noteworthy.
The wicked heroine in The Spider's Web is a Russian, a race who in the pages of fiction are almost always available for obloquy. Mrs. Gowing infiict e on her readers long conver- sations held at political receptions, of which we can only say that they are even duller than they would be in real life. Apart from a certain dexterity in the marshalling of a time- worn plot, the book is hardly worth notice.
Previous page
