NOVELS.
THE ANDERSONS.*
Miss MACNAUGHTAN, to whom we are indebted for excellent entertainment in the past, has enhanced our obligation by her new novel. The Andersons deals with the emancipation and social elevation of a Scots family in the second and third generation. The original Anderson made his money as a
shipbuilder on the Clyde, and the business is carried on by his son Matthew, a widower with three children. Another son, who discredited himself by a misalliance, died young, leaving a daughter Flora, who lives with her two maiden aunts, the Misses Janet and Isabella Anderson, and plays a prominent part in these pages. These worthy ladies live in solid comfort near Lachlan, a village on the West Coast, and their brother Matthew rents a shooting-box in the neighbour- hood from an impecunious Peer. The local doctor, a Free Kirk minister, and a wonderful Princess Charming, Miss Dundas, an orphan heiress whose beauty is only equalled by her generosity, complete the cast of principals.
The opening chapters, in which we are introduced to Flora, her aunts, and her "climbing " cousins, are amongst the best that Miss Maciaaughtan has ever written. Flora is a most engaging specimen of the managing woman ; afraid of no one, not even of her formidable Aunt Janet, honest as the day, and yet not devoid of feminine weaknesses, including a mistaken estimate of her own good looks. We get a vivid picture of her on her rounds :—
" Flora stopped and spoke to everyone as a matter of course. Her voice was incisive and somewhat high-pitched. Her tongue was frequently attuned to plain-speaking, and her native kindli- ness of heart was mixed with a fierce impatience of stupidity, which, in its acute form, she recognized as distinctly a male attribute. She believed that boundless charity meant dimness of vision, and often lamented her own uncompromising clearness of sight. Everyone expected help from Flora, and the fact that she scolded as she helped saved most of them from falling into the weakness of gratitude. When she scented thanks she became severe to the point of shrewishness."
The Andersone. By B. Macnaughtan. London : John Murray. [Ss.]
Her uncle and cousins are drawn for us with unsparing fidelity,—Matthew Anderson, the dismal Puritan ; Maggie, the meek, long-nosed Cinderella ; the ambitious and dashing "Beetris " (Beatrice), who veiled a daring spirit with a " certain austerity of primness "; and the florid and bounding Gordon, who had been through the furnace of Harrow and Cambridge without its singeing a hair off his heel. Beatrice's artistic aspirations were pronounced. She painted on the door of her studio in Old English letters "Ye Room of Silence," and cultivated the simple life as represented by fumed oak, rush baskets, brown paper, and whitewash. But as Flora shrewdly remarked on the eve of the great tribal exodus to London, they will need to let on that there is plenty of money behind the simplicity, or I doubt it may fall a little flat. Simplicity
has to be an expression of wealth, and not an expression of poverty, before it is a success, to my way of thinking." But many things happen before this epoch-making flight to the South, and many are the opportunities for plain speaking that occur to Flora, her Aunt Janet, Dr. Patterson, her well- meaning but ungainly suitor, and Mr. Guthrie, the lame Free Kirk minister. Mr. Guthrie is the most original character in the book; a fine scholar, tormented with doubt as well as by
physical infirmity, who chose to hide his misery under the mask of a buffoon:—
" One of the worst qualities of the Minister was that he never lost his temper; his sourest jokes were made in a jocund manner. It has ever been the fashion to paint a clown as some queer fellow—a jester has a hunch-back under his jingling bells. Some nimbleness of wit seems to be expected from those whom Nature has laughed at. Let wise men say why this should be so. Perhaps it is an arm raised to ward off the heavy hand of sympathy ; or, who knows, the last word of pathos may be a laugh. Mr. Guthrie joked, but his eyes were dark with the shadow in them of those who suffer much, and his pale face bad a twisted look when he laughed."
We see Mr. Guthrie at his very worst at a terrible tea-party at the Manse, when even to read his jokes makes one hot all over. Later on in the novel we come to recognise his finer
qualities, and to appreciate the splendid audacity of Miss Dundas in forcibly kidnapping him on the high seas in the interests of the long-nosed Cinderella. And this is not the only occasion on which Miss Dundas intervenes in the character of a goddess from the machine. When the florid Gordon persuades Maggie to settle with a " bookie " to whom he has lost at Sandown, and then allows her to be made the family scapegoat, it is Miss Dundas who penetrates the shield of Maggie's self-sacrificing reticence and exposes her craven brother. Altogether, she is a very wonderful person, com- bining a lively appreciation of luxury and smart society with a charming fidelity to her homely friends, but on the whole more adorable than credible. In any case Miss Macnaughtan ought to have found a more suitable mate for her than that easygoing Peer's sou, Jim Gair, who Lad never done a day's work in his life. Jim, at best, is a good-natured "waster," who in occasional spasms of self-criticism dreams of leading a strenuous life, but in the end hangs up his hat in the house of an heiress. However, he has compunctions, and his
behaviour to his father when that never strong-brained noble- man becomes rainolli and suffers from delusions is a model of filial piety. Still, Lord Gair and Jim are not easy to reconcile with Miss Macnaughtan's vigorous protests against attacks on the "idle rich." The London scenes are far less interesting than those on the West Coast of Scotland. But the recital
of Beatrice's indefatigable efforts is amusing, and there is an admirable touch in the description of her dismal father, who, while shocked by the wickedness of London, is none the less resentful of its neglect of himself, and determined to assert himself by his only weapon,—wealth.
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