NOVELS.
FENWICK'S CAREER.*
MRS. HIIMPHRY WARD'S new novel, apart from its intrinsic excellences of style and matter, derives an added interest from the brief preface in which she vindicates the method adopted by her in this as well as in two of her earlier books. The method, put briefly, is to transfer an episode in real life to a later period, and re-enact it under altered conditions and amid new surroundings. Thus the relations between Mlle. de Lespinasse and Madame du Deffand supplied the main outlines of the plot of Lady Rose's Daughter, just as those between Byron and Lady Caroline Lamb served a similar purpose in The Marriage of William Ashe, while in the volume before us the outlines of Romney's strange domestic history are adapted to an environment of a century later. Of her indebtedness Mrs. Humphry Ward makes no secret. Indeed, she goes so far as to represent the principal actors in her story as conscious of their resemblance to their historic prototypes,— a piece of conscientiousness which we cannot but regard as inartistic. Nothing, again, could be more unequivocal than her attitude in regard to the principles involved :— • Pentacles Career. By Mrs. Humphry Ward. London: Smith, Elder, and Co. [69.]
"The story told in the present book," she writes, "owes some- thing to the past, in its picturing of the present, as its prede- cessors have done ; though in much leas degree. The artist, as I hold, may gather from any field, so long as he sacredly respects what other artists have already made their own by the trans- muting processes of the mind. To draw on the conceptions or the phrases that have once passed through the warm minting of another's brain, is, for us moderns at any rate, the literary crime of crimes. But to the teller of stories, all that is mcorded of the real life of men, as well as all that his own eyes can see, is offered for the enrichment of his tale. This is a clear and simple principle ; yet it has been often denied. To insist upon it is, in my belief, to uphold the true flag of Imagination, and to defend the wide borders of Romance."
That is a perfectly legitimate contention, and its application, in our opinion, cannot be held in any way to violate the canons of literary ethics. At the same time, the deliberate and continued adoption of this method in fiction excludes a writer from the ranks of the genuine creators. To begin with, it is only a variation on the roman a clef, which can never be romance of the first order. Again, apart from the borrowing of a ready-made plot, it renders it impossible for those who are familiar with the original story to avoid con- stant comparisons between the authentic version and its modernised variant. The reader is haunted by the echoes of the actual past, and undistracted absorption in the story is impossible. It will be objected that the greatest of romancers have been the freest in their borrowings from the past; but the analogy is deceptive, for in this sphere Shake- speare drew not from fact but from fiction, and the haunting comparisons do not obtrude themselves. Variations upon imaginary themes admit of an infinitely freer and more flexible treatment than variations which recall actual occurrences in real life.
Setting aside the aesthetic principles involved in the choice of subject, one may readily admit that the author's indebtedness is minimised by her treatment. It is Romney's story, but idealised, chronologically condensed, and adapted to a wholly different social and moral environment. John Fenwick is a young Westmorland painter of genius, self- taught, ambitious, arrogant, and underbred. A local patron lends him a hundred pounds, on the strength of which he goes up to London to seek his fortune, leaving his wife and child behind him. He is taken up by a titled patron, whose casual condemnation of imprudent early marriages induces Fenwick to conceal his own, and he finds his chief encouragement and inspiration in the companionship of Eugenie de Pastourelles, Lord Findon's daughter, who is living apart from her husband, a blackguardly French Count. Committed to a course of deception, afraid to risk the con- sequences of undeceiving his new friends, and intoxicated by success, Fenwick neglects his wife, whose vague suspicions are suddenly confirmed by the daughter of the local patron, a vindictive girl who had never forgiven the artist for an unflattering portrait. Frenzied with jealousy, Phoebe Fenwick hurries up to London at the moment when her husband has scored his first success. Fenwiok is out when Phoebe reaches his studio, but she finds damning evidence of his unfaithfulness in some letters—wholly inno- cent, but admitting of a compromising interpretation—from Madame de Pastourelles, and without awaiting his return she leaves her wedding-ring with a letter of irrevocable farewell, mutilates a portrait of her rival, and disappears into space carrying her child with her. The second act of the drama opens twelve years later. All Fenwick's efforts to trace his wife and child have failed, but he has still kept the secret of his marriage from his London friends. He has been the artistic comet of a few seasons, has quarrelled with the Academy, lost his popularity and a good deal of his self- confidence. Meantime Madame de Pastourelles, in self- defence, has persuaded her most eligible and attractive admirer, an Admirable Crichton named Arthur Welby, to marry her cousin, who is in love with him. Welby chivalrously consents ; the marriage proves a fiasco, his wife losing her health and beauty and developing an insane jealousy ; and Madame de Pastourelles, at last released by the death of her husband, and believing Fenwick to be unattached, is ready to reward his devotion with her hand, when the secret of his marriage is suddenly revealed. The information has been volunteered to Welby by the same woman who first aroused Phoebe's suspicions ; and Welby, righteously indignant with Fenwick for making Madame de Pastourelles an accomplice in his ignominy, insists on an immediate disclosure. The sequel reveals the true nobility of Madame de Pastourelles' character. On recovering from the shock of Fenwick's con- fession her first thought is of his wife ; her fixed resolve, at whatever cost to her own pride, to find and reconcile her to her husband. The most striking proof of Mrs. Humphry Ward's talent is that the essentially new character in the plot, who takes the place of Lady Hamilton in Romney's story, is far the most interesting and attractive of the dramatis personae. Eugenie de Paetourelles, the true heroine of the story, is, we are inclined to think, the most con- ' sistently sympathetic and distinguished of all the women characters portrayed by Mrs. Ward. Her motto might be Virgil's famous line, hand ignara mali miseris succurrere disco, and one can well understand how her companionship proved a liberal education to a man of Fenwick's temper and gifts. Fenwick himself, though carefully and faithfully drawn, fails to command as much compassion as the writer intends him to receive. The Nemesis of his neglect is excessive, but the reader's pity is largely neutralised by the natural antipathy which his consistent selfishness excites. Everything is traceable to his initial act of moral cowardice, the consequences of which entail quite as acute sufferings on his innocent Egeria as on himself. Of the other characters, Watson, the unsuccessful artist, is the most engaging. Welby hardly justifies the descriptions of his charm, though his denunciation of Fenwick is perhaps the most impassioned moment in what, with all its limitations, is a deeply interest- ing, eloquent, and finely wrought study of the magnanimous and the artistic temperaments.
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