GIDEON FLEYCE.*
Mn. Luca is a clever man, and there is a good deal that is clever in this novel, but we should not call the novel a good one as a whole. It has the greatest fault which the novel of a clever man can have, that, in spite of a very ingenious and sensational plot, the permanent effect produced on the reader's mind is of something hanging fire. A great deal of the social life is extremely laboured, and gives the impression that the author paused between each paragraph to think what he should write next. For instance, the sketch of the leading tradesmen, and also of the 'Long-shore men, 'at Sax-ton-on-the-Sea, is very laboured, and suggests an unsuccessful following in the foot- steps of George Eliot's studies of this kind of life. Studies of this kind should not interrupt the progress of a story, unless they add very much to your appreciation of the story when resumed. Mr. Lucy's do not. We are always wanting to get to the end of them. Though no one can say that they are not the result of observation, and sometimes of close observation, yet they are not easy ; they give no impression of entering naturally into the author's mode of telling his story ; they appear to be pieced into it, to eke it out. Take the following. for example, which is as good a specimen of this sort of study as we can find ; indeed, the best, but which none the less conveys the impression of effort :— "The'Longshore men took to him [Gideon Fleyoe] from the very first. It is a peculiarity of the vocation of this class of citizens that they should have a good deal of leisure. To the casual observer it might appear that they earned an honest living simply by lounging about the beach with their hands deeply set in their trousers pockets, and their eyes intently fixed on the distant horizon. Here Gideon found them at whatever time chance made most convenient to himself. Early morning or late afternoon they were sure to be there, always with their hands in their pockets, and their gaze far, far at sea. Many of them wore top-boots comine high over their knees. Tho sore-wester appeared indispensable to their calling, and all affected a blue woollen jersey convenient for rolling up at the hips, so that they could, with- out exhausting their store of energy, get their hands in their pockets. What at first struck the unaccustomed eye of Gideon was their appa- rent state of deadly preparation. They seemed ready to .go anywhere and do anything. On the second morning of his visit to the beach he hastened his steps, lest peradventure he should find them gone, and his opportunity of improving the acquaintance lost. But there they were just the same, as ready as ever to go anywhere and do anything; but in the meanwhile, standing still and doing nothing. Gideon chatted with them in his cheery manner, talking on all topics but that of the parliamentary representation of Saxton. They also avoided that subject, but they knew very well what was in the wind, and fully appreciated the compliment paid to them by the new candi- date in seeking them out thus early. Gideon did violence to his feelings by possessing himself of a tobacco pouch, which he filled at the tobacconist's in High Street with the strongest shag.' Also, more offensive still to his sensitive nature, he had a roll of pigtail which he was wont to produce during passes in the conversation. These were so frequent that the pigtail was speedily absorbed by the 'Longehore men. The engrossing nature of their occupation left them little time for idle conversation, and induced sententious habits of speech. But when Long Bill, in the middle of one afternoon, broke a silence that had lasted for a quarter of an hour with the
remark, right hatable gent, that's what I say,' there was a grant of approval all round. Gideon's name had not been mentioned, but every one knew who was meant. Certainly it could not be Mr. Montgomery [the sitting Member], who never came down to the beach, and had never so much as offered a man of them a pipe of tobacco."
The sketch of the Saxton tradesmen is even more laborious, and so it is with the study of the Evangelical chapel in Camden
• Gideon Fleyce. A Novel. By Henry W. Lucy. 3 vols. London Cbatto and W:ndno.
Town,—Rehoboth, as it is called,—and of the tradesmen and women who attend it. Here is a sketch of Mrs. Dumfy, one of the regular attendants at Rehoboth, and her devotion to the furniture of her lodger's parlour. There is observation, and close observation, in it, but something wanting which should make the observation amuse ns, instead of wearying ns, as it certainly does :-
" When Mrs. Dumfy opened the door to the caller,.she was a trifle more than usually unprepossessing in appearance. It was eleven o'clock in The morning, and Jack had disturbed her in the middle of the consecrated task of polishing the stumpy legs of the sofa in the best and only parlour. When Mrs. Dnmfy polished the legs of a sofa, or of any other article of furniture, she put her whole soul into furniture paste. She had a notion that continued friction, car- ried on at the greatest velocity possible, and persevered in for a cer- tain number of minutes—a space of time defined by the formula ' as long as her back would hold '—was absolutely necessary to obtain the desired result. She polished the legs of a sofa as an Indian rubs. sticks to get a fire, or did rub them when Fenimore Cooper was alive. Stopping short of a certain measure of friction the fire might not be kindled, and the labour bad all to be gone through again. On this principle Mrs. Damfy polished her furniture, and it was Jack's mis- fortune that he happened to knock at the door when she was some- thing like midway through the process. She might have stopped to finish it, and let the caller wait ; but she knew that, in such circum- stances, men had a habit of robbing their feet on the steps, or perhaps leaning against the railings or the door. Callers were to be got rid of with the least possible delay. 'So with a petulant groan Mrs. Dnmfy left the half-polished limb, and with a duster thrown over her shoulder, and a rag smelling vilely of furniture paste in her right hand, she confronted the cavalier who had a moment earlier walked down the street glowing with anticipation."
It is just the same, to our minds, with the political sketches. We take no interest in O'Brien (and wonder, by the way, what in the world the heroine finds in him to love). The account of him and of his political friends is acute but heavy writing.
Wratten and Gosley bore us. Boscobel and Petit Philpott give us no pleasure, indeed Mr. Lucy suppresses the brilliant parts of Boscobel's conversation, though assuring us that he became brilliant ; and, on the whole, leaves us with the impres- sion that Petit Philpott was at least Boscobel's equal.
The only part of the book that seems to us to have real power is the description of the relation between the usurer and his son, and the scene in which Mr. Israel Gideon deceives his son with the idea that he is going to lend him the £3,004 he wants, and instead of drawing a cheque, writes a male- diction on him, for the signature of which he maliciously borrows a stamp from his victim. That is a powerful scene, and the whole of the sensational plot of which this scene is the central point, is managed with an ingenuity worthy almost of Wilkie Collins. On the whole, we cannot but think that the sensational part of this story is really the best. In. all that is not sensational, there is an effort and languor which disappoint us in so clever a writer as Mr. Lucy. But the old miser is powerfully sketched, and the vulgar but far from evil-minded son, eager for wealth, like his father, but not for its own sake, rather for the advantages which it can pur- chase,—is drawn with a certain moderation and an amount of careful shading which seem to us to suggest that Mr. Lucy might write a much better novel of plot than he has written in the present instance, where plot is much more than eked out,—positively swelled out,—by society sketches of a
cumbrous kind. For once, we prefer the sensational ele- ment in a novel, to the studies of character and life. Indeed,. there is more of character itself in the old Jew and his son, than in all the rest of the tale put together. After the murder, there is a scene which suggests much too strongly the passage in The House of the Sereu Gables where Hawthorne muses over his dead judge, and taunts him with not bestirring himself, though the time for his pressing engagements is flying by. Stilt, we prefer even that scene, and the comparison with a story of
vastly greater power which it forces upon us, to the club dinner, the political manipulations of the Saxton tradesmen, and the elaborate descriptions of Saxton corruption. Mr. Lucy is a very lively writer, but his usual liveliness is replaced by forced vivacity throughout the greater part of this novel; and only in the portions of it where we expected nothing, did we find more than we had hoped.
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