NOVELS.
HOLY MATRIMONY.*
"DOROTHEA GERARD " certainly disdains in her choice of a subject—the terminus of the old novel, the starting-point of the new—any pretence at novelty. But then she has the 8r1.. of saying the commonplace with distinction, and has never shown it to more advantage than here. She starts with a pair of heroines, sisters; there is a mother, happily described as "one of those clinging plants among women who cannot help winding round whatever happens to be the nearest support, whether it be a marble column or a wooden post " ; and there is the Baroness Bruckner, who has had her experi- ences, is going to reform society by her book on "Luxury," and meanwhile plays the part of chorus in the life-drama of the von Falkenthal family.
General von Falkenthal leaves a widow with nothing but the pension of a General's widow, and two daughters, the heroines aforesaid, with nothing at all. Each of "them has an impecunious lover. Irene, the younger, who is dominated by feeling, persists in carrying out the engagement which had been made while her father was alive; Bertha, who is more worldly, and dreads, above all things, to have "to' bide in the cupboard when the butcher calls," marries a wealthy middle- aged bourgeois, who demands " nothing but sincerity and faithfulness." So, by the time we reach p. 55; the two histories begin. On the one hand there ,is love in a cottage, and "a small one at that" ; on the other there is a "marriage of reason" in a very dull and dreary house, where the wealthy citizen is following the employment of his leisure, a strictly scientific agriculture, in which forget me-nots are counted for nothing except as spoiling the hay.
Our author follows with a pitiless realism the fortunes of Irene and Claudius Hayn. The sanguine calculations which had divided the narrow income between the various necessities of life di) not work out ; childran come with an inconvenient rapidity; and promotion lingers now that the young civilian has lost his social importance. Irene, who is as inexperienced as she is unselfish, accepts civilities which have to be returned at an embarrassing cost. In short, we have all the eiperiences • Ilfektrimony. By Dorothea Gerard (Madame Longard do Longgarde). London - Methuen and Co. N8.1
of genteel poverty, familiar except for the foreign setting, described with an unshrinking sternness. It would not be true to say that they are squalid; but the restraint with which Madame de Longgarde uses her colours does not make her picture less effectively painful.
The other story is, to our mind, less successful. The "nothing-but-sincerity-and-faithfulness" agreement breaks down ; Herr Blumberg learns to love his wife, and demands love in return. Such a thing has probably happened many times. There are countries where the marriage of arrange- ment is so much the rule, and the marriage of choice so much the exception, that if it did not frequently, we may even say commonly, happen, the whole social edifice would have long ago fallen into ruin. But this is not a question that can be here discussed. It must suffice to say that such a conclusion would not suit the plot of Holy Matrimony. Of course, the old lover turns up again ; Bertha learns, half uncon- sciously, to reciprocate his passion, and—but we have already anticipated, it may be, too much of Madame de Longgarde's story.
And what of the other couple ? The author's resolve seems to fail her. Logically, the sufferings of this imprudent pair ought to have been allowed to work out to the bitter end. We shall not be injuring the prospects of Holy Matrimony, which, after all, will be judged not as a story but as a study of life, by telling our readers that this is not allowed to happen. There is a pecuniary Providence that watches over the fortunes of the couple that has loved well if not wisely, and whatever the unpitying genius of the New Fiction may say, we are glad that it should be so. The really consistent person is the Baroness with her denunciations of luxury. If she could bring back civilised mankind to the simplicity of earlier days ! But alas! it is another instance of the mop and the Atlantic.
One scene, where a most pathetic effect is made out of the very simplest materials, must have a special notice. It is where the widow, knowing well from her own experience how futile are the sanguine Irene's calculations, begins to lay by for her daughter's future needs. We must own to having felt "touch of tears" when Madame Falkenthal produces the little blue-covered savings-bank book in which are recorded the scanty results of her little economies, made against the coming of Irene's first child. "Somebody surely must think of to-morrow," she piteously says.
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