NOVELS OF THE WEEK.* DR. WEIR MITCHELL, a distinguished American
physician, is already well known to English readers by his excellent historical romances, two of which, Hugh Wynne and The Adventures of Francois, have already been noticed in these columns. Characteristics, a work which originally appeared some eight years ago in America, introduces Dr. Mitchell in a different, but not less agreeable, light. It is described in the opening sentence as being "a broken record of portions of the lives of certain friends of mine, and of what I, Owen North, physician, have seen and heard," Let us begin by con- gratulating Dr. Mitchell on the excellent taste and good feeling with which he has turned his medical experiences to
• (1.) Characteristics. By S. Weir Mitchell, M.D., LL.D. (Harvard). London : Macmillan and Co. [6s.]—(2.) In Full Cry. By Richard Marsh. London : F. V. White and Co. [Gs.]—(3.) Lore the Player. By Helen V. Savile. London : Swan Sonnenschein and Co. [6s.]—(4.) The Mystery of Monkswood. By Mrs. Lodge. London : Digby and Long. [Gs.)—(5.) Jaspar Tristram. By A. W. Clarke. London : W. Heinemann. [Cs.]—(6.) The Wings of Silence. By George Cossins. London : Gay and BIrd.—(7.) Narita/ Liability. By Elizabeth Phipps Train. London : Ward, Lock, and Co. [3s. 6d.]—(9.) The Sword of Allah. By T. R. Threlfall. London : Ward, Lock, and Co. [3s. 6(1.1— (9.) Yankee Volunteer. By IL Imlay Taylor. London : Gay and Bird. [Cs.] —(10.) The Honour of Vivien Bruce. By Mrs. J. H. Needell. London : F. V. White alla Co. [Cii.1
literary account. No capital has been made out of horrors as in The Diary of a Late Physician, nor is there any weari- some or offensive parade of medical " shop " such as dis- figured a recent volume of a similar cast. The account of the narrator's service as a doctor in the Civil War, of his wound and subsequent paralysis, of his strange dreams when under the influence of morphia. and of his ultimate recovery, is thoroughly, and at times engrossingly, interesting. What is more, the inner life of a doctor that is revealed to us in these pages is treated exclusively on its nobler side. We see the pathos. not the squalor, of the hospital ward. In great part, however, the book is made up of the conversations of "friends in council,"—the doctor and his three chosen associates, a scholar, a sculptor, and a solicitor, all men of character, culture, and wealth, and very excellent conversa- tions they are. We are especially attracted towards Vincent, the solicitor, "one of the rare men who have intellectual apprehensions so swift as to seem instinctive a man too sensitively reserved to admit many to his friendship, too silent as to his charities to be known to the world as generous." The book is not lacking in incident, notably the strange encounter of wits in which the narrator triumphs over an unscrupulous millionaire ; and not the least of its merits is the store of curious observations, most of them obviously based on the writer's experience, with which dialogue and narrative are alike liberally enriched. The last chapters, moreover, are devoted to a very pretty love story. From all of which we hope to have made it clear that Characteristics is very well worth reading.
Mr. Richard Marsh's work, even when dealing with hackneyed themes, is always redeemed from conventionality by a certain vigorous audacity of invention and a felicitous employment of the macabre element. In Full Cry is a really exciting story of a murder mystery, in which—as readers of Mr. Marsh's previous works will not be surprised to learn—the murderer is at once the central figure and hero. But it is only fair to Mr. Marsh to explain that Blaise Pollnarston had terrible provocation, that according to his own account he was unconscious when the fatal shot was fired, and that, whatever his previous intention may have been, he was not morally responsible for his action at that moment. Anyhow, the plot is effectually thickened by the fact that the man who is shot leaves all his fortune to Blaise, at that time a social outcast living' in the slums. Blaise is saved from the police by the desperate devotion of a flower-girl, who denounces a rejected suitor as the murderer, and in the end the innocent man is extricated by the confession of Blaise in open court. This, however, is the barest outline of a story packed full of thrilling and romantic incidents, and at the same time distinguished from the mass of sensational novels by the consistent character drawing of the hero and heroine.
The elements of fantasy and humour, which in Mr. Marsh's story neutralise the extravagance and unreality inherent in all melodrama, are wanting in Mrs. Savile's Love the Player. Here we have melodrama lurid and unalloyed, starting from a deathbed scene in which a rejected suitor vows vengeance on the betrayer of the dying woman, and culminating in the death of the victim's twin-sister Janet, who has fallen in love with the brother of the betrayer, and, while endeavouring to warn the guilty man of his danger, is shot by mistake by the hireling of the avenger. The latter, by the way, is a priest with "two missions." " ' One is to save souls from hell, the other, and the main object of my existence, is to destroy the body and soul of Hester's destroyer and of that child's father.'" Mrs. Savile, who leaves no opportunity unused to pile up the agony, represents Janet Brady as the target of much vulgar scorn and abuse through her adoption of her sister's illegitimate child, of whom she is supposed to be the mother.
It is difficult to believe that any young woman could be so unsophisticated as to marry an old Peer without finding out the family name of his son by hie first marriage. Yet this is what the heroine of The Mystery of Monkszvood does, and pays the penalty by discovering years afterwards that the son is the man she loves. All the characters, however, behave admirably except the husband, who develops acute jealousy and carries off the heroine to an old house where his first wife, whom he believes to be dead, is really masquerading as
a ghost. The latter then stabs the luckless heroine, who dies of "syncope," and the survivors are all as miserable as possible. In spite of glaring absurdities, the book is not un- readable.
Mr. Clarke applies the analytic method to the modern schoolboy with fatiguing elaboration of detail in Jaspar Tristram. His hero has certain good qualities—endurance and unselfishness in particular—but is far from being an engaging character. Of dialogue there is singularly little, the book being almost entirely devoted to the dissection of motives, and the portrayal of various phases of hero-worship. In point of expression Mr. Clarke leaves much to be desired, his manner recalling the complicated circumlocution of the later novels of Mr. Henry James.
Mr. George Cossins has given us a decidedly amusing novel in The Wings of Silence. The Australian chapters, which deal with the adventures and privations of two pro- spectors, who eventually discover a rich hoard of gold left by some Chinese in a cave under the cliffs called "The Wings of Silence," are specially good. The English part turns on a successful act of personation. Clem Hay, one of the first party (of two) who found the hoard, thinks he has killed his partner, Joe Pontifex, by accidentally throwing him over the cliff ; and wishing to compensate Pontifex's family with the proceeds of the Chinese hoard, he decides, on the strength of a remarkable likeness, to pose as the missing man. Meantime, Pontifex has been rescued by a second ex- ploring party, and no sooner has Hay bought a beautiful country house and installed his putative mother, sister, and brother therein, than the real Pontifex COM•38 back. How- ever, after Hay has returned to Australia he is forgiven by the Pontifexes, for the girl, as soon as she discovers that he is not her brother, finds that she is as much in love with him as he with her. Whereon the imbroglio is happily terminated by their marriage.
Spite of the forbidding young woman depicted on the cover and the somewhat infelicitous title, Marital Liability is bath clever and amusing. Here we have an American story of a man who takes upon himself the consequences of a forgery committed by his wife against her father, and goes to prison for ten years. The wife is an almost impossibly odious woman, but the story, which is well constructed and ingenious, Is not more improbable than that unfolded in our own Law Courts this week.
Mr. Threlfall tells in The Sword of Allah a spirited story of Thomas Keith and Mehemet Ali's invasion of Mecca in the days of the Wahabis. The adventures of the hero, which are, of course, more or less a matter of history, are well told, and the account of Mehemet Al's domestic life is very interesting, if not edifying. We note that in his account of the massacre of the Mamelukes Mr. Threlfall holds to the story of the famous "leap," which, however, cannot be verified. The picture of Mehemet Ali on the fatal occasion is cleverly drawn, though Mr. Threlfall has omitted to avail himself of the remarkable story related by Nassau Senior in his Egyptian Journals. Senior was told that the tension was so great that ever afterwards Mehemet All suffered from an affection of the throat which showed itself in a hoarseness or nervous cough which he could never shake off.
A Yankee Volunteer, though a very carefully constructed story of the American Revolution, that is to Bay, though well
put together and adequately written, is lacking in spontaneity and freshness, and reads rather as if the facts had been specially crammed up for the purpose of writing the book. Mr. Imlay Taylor has done better work before.
Commonplace materials are used in The Honour of Vivien Flruce with sufficient dexterity to produce quite agreeable results. The story "flows "in a manner that is almost amusing, while the operation of reading is greatly facilitated by the size of the type.
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