NOVELS.
FRKULEIN SCHMIDT AND MR. ANSTRIITHER*
IT was a commonplace of criticism not very long ago that the epistolary form in fiction bad become hopelessly hackneyed ; but Mr. Lucas, and now " Elizabeth," to mention only two eiponents of the method, have taught us how necessary it is to revise this summary verdict. The explanation is, after all, very simple. The formula matters little enough if there is freshness in the mind which employs it. In fiction, as in real life, letter's can be dull or delightful, and we know from past experience that "Elizabeth " is incapable of dulness. But the task she has set herself in her new venture is one of more than common difficulty, since the correspondence is one-sided, not a single letter from Mr. Anstruther being included in the collection. Yet on reflec- tion one cannot but acquiesce in this decision. To begin with, we can almost reconstruct his share in the correspondence from the passages which arise out of his letters, and the picture which we form is not one that excites a deep desire to know more of him. He had "a way with him," no doubt good looks and a pleasant voice, and a certain magnetism. But when a man kisses and runs away and tells, and having jilted a poor for a rich girl, excites the natural jealousy of the heiress by trying to be on with the old love as well as the new, :.the gentle reader has no use for him except as the recipient of poetic justice, and of that, it must be admitted, he gets his full . share. For Roger Anstruther did not merely realise that he had rejected the love of a charming and clever woman, he courted . and endured the humiliation of learning that her love had . turned into something like contempt for a shattered idol, and that she infinitely preferred her poverty and independence to the renewal of the old relations. Why did she ever love him? it will be asked, and one is tempted to fall back on Byron's answer:— "Curious fool, be still,
Is human love the fruit of human will?"
But it may be explained that Rose-Marie Schmidt, though the daughter of a German Professor at Jena, had an English. woman for a mother, and that young Anstruther, who spent a year in their house studying German for his F. 0. examina- tion, was not only good-looking, but intelligent, and admittedly -the only congenial companion of her own standing and the other sex that she had ever met. Rose-Marie, on her side, was irresistible ; combining wit, beauty, and a fine taste in letters :'and music. It was inevitable that Roger should fall in love with her. But his declaration was postponed till within an hour of his departure for England, and being at once ambitious and dependent on a worldly father, he easily secured her consent to a clandestine engagement. We have already indicated the sequel. Roger becomes engaged to an English heiress, and breaks off his engagement ; but after a . decent interval, during which Rose-Marie has been at death's door, and he has, presumably, been smitten by remorse, he persuades her to resume their correspondence to mitigate the boredom of his life. Fraulein Schmidt, now wholly cured of her ..unrequited affection, good-naturedly consents, and assumes the ;:role of entertainer, admonisher, and candid friend. With her love is impossible without respect, and the feet that she is eincapable of looking up to Roger renders her position secure. She gives him no encouragement, but it is only too obvious Abort these self-revealing letters, by turns shrewd and tender, -witty and genial, bring home to him with irresistible force the folly as well as the cowardice of his choice. As Rose-Marie tells him with remorseless frankness, he is a most weak _person :— Frdulein Schmidt and Mr. dnetruther: bong the Letters of on independent Woman. By the Author of "Elizabeth and her German Garden," Loudon :Eolith, Elder, and Co. [fatl "Anything more easily delighted in the first place or more quickly tired in the second I never in my life saw. Does nothing satisfy you for more than a day or two P And the enthusiasm of you at the beginnings of things. And the depression; the despair of you once you have' ot used to them. I know you are clever, full of brains, intellectually all that can be desired, but what's the good of that when the rest you is so weak? You are of a diseased fastidiousness. There'. not a person you have praised to me whom you have not later on disliked. When you were here I used to wonder as I listened, but I did believe you. Now I know that the world cannot possibly contain so many offensive people. and that it is always.so with you—violent beat, freezing cold. I cannot see you drown without holding out a hand. For you are young ; you are, in the parts outside your strange, ill-disciplined emotions, most full of promise; and eircumstauces have knitted me into an unalterable friend. Perhaps I can help you to a greater steadfastness, a greater compactness of soul. But do not tell 1120 too much. Do not put me in an inextricably difficult position. It would not, of course, be really in- extricable, for I would extricate myself by the simple process of relapsing into silence. I say this because your letters have a growing tendency to pour out everything you happen to be feeling. That in itself is not a bad thing, but you must rightly choose your listener. Not every one should be allowed to listen. Certain things cannot be shouted out from the housetops. You forget that we hardly know each other, and that the well-mannered do not thrust their deeper feelings on a person who shrinks from them. I hope you understand that I am willing to hear you talk about most things, and that you will used no further warning to keep off the few swampy places.. And just think of all the things you can write to me about, all the masses of breathlessly interesting things in this breathlessly interesting world, without talking about people at all. Look round you this fine spring weather and tell me, for instance, what April is doing up your way, and whether, as you go to your work through the park, you too have not seen heavy Saturn laughing and leaping— how that sonnet has got into my head—and do not every day thank God for having bothered to make you at all."
This is most excellent advice, and Rose-Maria herself practises what she preaches. Even in a little German town she finds the world " breathlessly interesting," and her letters are brimful of humorous description and comment —ranging from domestic economy and experiments in diet to high literary criticism. Rose-Marie has not been embittered but mellowed by her ordeal ; and one of the pleasantest traits in her character is her sympathy with others in like case,— hand ignore mali raiseris suceurrere discit. Some readers may think that there is too much talk of books and art in her letters, but it is vivid and unconventional talk, and the comic relief is seldom wanting. In all " Elizabeth's" books it would be hard to find a more truly ludiorous episode than that of Johanna and the trumpeter. The effect of her letters on an impressionable, fastidious, and discontented nature is a fore- gone conclusion. Miss Cberiton—the heiress—grows jealous and throws Roger over for a titled suitor, and as he is not the man to acquiesce in this righteous Nemesis, he persistently tries to induce Rose-Marie to reconsider the situation. The denoiiment will not conciliate sentimentalists, and we are by no means sure that it is in strict accordance with experience, but it has both logic and justice to commend it. It remains to be added that the minor characters immensely add to the entertainment of the story. " Elizabeth " is fond of sticking pins into the Germans, but she makes handsome amends by the portrait of the Professor, a delightful specimen of kindly inefficiency, and at worst the qualities which she satirises excite more amusement than disgust.
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