BY PROXY.* SINCE Mr. Payn delighted the novel-loving world with
his Lost Sir Massingberd, he has written a great many novels, and he has long been an acknowledged favourite with the public. He has, however, never produced any real rival to his earliest work until this, his latest. By Proxy, without being faultless, possesses the most important qualities that go to the making of a first-rate novel, originality, strength, ingenuity, the charm of the unex- pected, distinctness in character-drawing, and that quality which one feels, but cannot analyse, the power of attracting at once and maintaining an unrelaxed hold upon the attention of the reader. The conception of the story is so strange and unique, the scenes laid in China are the result of so much study and care, and the interest that attaches to the central figures is so great, in- deed fascinating, that the English scenes and the secondary per- sonages could hardly fail to sink to the condition of mere adjuncts. The love-story, that generally forms the strong point of a novel, is not by any means a strong point in this one ; the girl heroine is, like all Mr. Payn's girl heroines, thoroughly good, ladylike, and unaffected ; and the young lover is a nice fellow, somewhat on the pattern of Edward Chester in Barnaby Budge, but they have no chance of really interesting the reader, absorbed in the history of Ralph Pennicuick and Arthur Conway, his friend, who is the " proxy " of this wonderful narrative.
That a man should be willing to die in the stead of his friend, condemned to death in a foreign country, for love, not of him, but of the woman who has preferred him, is a sublime concep- tion, such as it needed all the power of Dickens to carry out in his Tale of Two Cities. There was nothing revolting in the story of that exchange of lives : Charles Darnay knew nothing of his pre- server's substitution of himself for him,—" alone," save for the fear-induced help of the spy, Sydney Carton "did it." There is unqualified romance in that "situation," and much power in the handling of it. Mr. Payn's story, which is treated so differently that it contradicts the very idea of romance, is a more daring invention than Dickens's, because it is animated by an even more abstract motive, and because the man for whom his friend is willing to die is one most unlikely to win the affection of either man or woman. This extraordi- nary complication, where no sympathy is evoked by one of the parties to the transaction of the substitution, and only moderate sympathy by the other, and which is a mere money- bargain, makes a demand upon the faith of the reader beyond that which Dickens made when he asked us to believe in exalted purity of sentiment, heroic courage, and absolute self- abnegation on the part of an habitual drunkard, who had long been the submissive victim of a blatant bully,—a demand extend- ing to the belief that a man would suffer a horrible death as the punishment of a supposed disgraceful deed, in order to secure a fortune for his daughter, whom he has not seen for ten years. Thus baldly stated, the notion seems preposterous ; but Mr. Payn, who has become skilful in method, works up this strange material with such art, that he beguiles the reader into the acceptance of it with faith as well as interest, and makes the two men who effect so extraordinary a bargain as real to his per-
• By Proxy. By James Payn, Author of ',Lost Sir Masaingberd," 8c. London : Chatto and Windus. ception as they are both, and almost equally, unsympathetic to his feelings. Not since the old Dickens days, when everybody regarded the novelist's creations as personal acquaintances, and country cousins would be shown Kingsgate Street, Holborn, as one of the London sights, because Mrs. Camp lived there, has the pre- sent writer heard a work of fiction so much discussed, or in such a sense of realism, as this novel ; and it is not a cheerful comment on human nature that most people will tell one they know a Ralph Pennicuick, and some will even protest that they are con- vinced the author had " so-and-so " in his mind when he drew the portrait of this thoroughly odious individual, who yet—and there is the skill of the artist—is no monster. The plot of the story is so clever and so ingenious, that the success of the book could not have failed to be secured by that alone, but the author of Lost Sir Massingberd had not to make his proofs of ingenuity and artifice. Not one of his intervening works has been deficient in these, but on the other hand, not one of them has even indi- cated his capacity for drawing such a character as that of Penni- cuick with so much self-restraint and consistency. If, in this work, Mr. Payn bad deliberately proposed to himself to show the novel-reading world that he could do with minuteness and dexterity the sort of thing which Mr. Wilkie Collins does with a kind of Dutch-doll-like jerkiness and unnaturalness, he might claim to have entirely succeeded. The anxiety which he excites in his readers to know how Conway has been rescued from the fate to which he has voluntarily condemned himself in Pennicuick's place, is little short of tormenting. Who was the Englishman whom Pennicuick and Conway's brother-officers, returning with the useless reprieve from the Governor of the province, find tied to the post, and hacked with the "ten thousand hideous wounds of the Ling-chih ?' " How is Conway's revenge on the man who bought his life from him, and then robbed his daughter of its price, to be worked out ? The most blasé novel-reader, and more emphatic still, the weariest reviewer, must perforce be im- patient to reach the solution of these questions. Herein is the author's success as a constructor, and it is complete ; it would be complete were the mere incidents only in question, and the persons wooden puppets, like the people in Mr. Wilkie Collins's .Moonstone or Two Destinies. But the success in this instance is of a double kind,—that of the constructor, and that of the nar- rator, the processes by which the latter is achieved being much more difficult of definition than those by which the former has been secured.
The story is seemingly open to the grave objection, sup- posing the plot to be merely related in outline, that Arthur Conway sells his life for £20,000, and relies for the pay- ment of the money to his daughter on the honour of a man who has just stolen a jewel from a Chinese Buddhist shrine, under cir- cumstances which prove him to be thoroughly dishonourable. This is a great difficulty ; but apart from the first principle of criticism in such cases, that something must be allowed to the exercise of sheer imagination, there is such subtle char- acter-drawing in the case of both Conway and Pennicuick, the inconsistencies which are to be found in every human being are so dexterously used in the instances in question, that when the story is read the difficulty is seen to be surmounted. The sketch of the two men as they sit in the covered boat, making its way up a tributary of the Cha-Ho, or Imperial Canal, by which they are journeying to the plains of Keang-Soo, is extremely clever, and furnishes the key to the story, in its delineation of the overbearing selfishness, cynicism, intolerance, tyranny, and vulgar insolence of Pennicuick, who holds all his surroundings in contempt, and tells his friend that " these Chinese are all mad, and their madness takes the most contemptible form, that of im- becility." Conway, too, is very finely drawn, as the man who bas missed his way in life, but whom everybody likes ; a weak person in many respects, and summed up thus :—" Had Captain Arthur Conway possessed a friend sufficiently sympathetic (which he does not) to inquire what he had done with his life and oppor- tunities in the world, he would have replied, ' Wasted myself I' " They discuss the country and the people, Con- way knowing both well, also the language ; his friend ignorant of all three, but in the thorough Philistine spirit ready with contempt and ridicule, and the moral stupidity which prompts him to the outrage he subsequently commits. He believes in nothing except the value of material enjoyments and the worth of money, and his creed colours, indeed guides, all his life. The whole of the conversation is characteristic and of im- portance to the story, especially its closing sentences, which ensue on some very brutal ridicule of Chinese religious ceremonies by Pennicuick " These crocks,' he says, ' never own themselves beaten when they pray for fine weather, and it does not come ; they put their gods out in. the rain to see how they like it; whereas our archbishops and bishops, with a total absence of spirit, go on praying till [very literally] " all's blue," and adopt no measure of retaliation whatever. I am afraid, however, I am shocking your prejudices. You are a believer in the• popular superstition ?'—' I am not a disbeliever in it, answered Conway, gravely.—' Is it possible? Then even these "crocks " have the advan- tage over you. They have no apprehension that after their lives here are ended—with its prisons and cangues and tyranny of all kinds—they are doomed to eternal misery. They have no fear of death whatever ; any man who is condemned to die can for a five-pound note, and another to " square " the mandarin, got some one else to die for him. I have seen such a substitute kneel down, with a cigarette in his mouth, for the- executioner to strike his head off.'—' I should be no more afraid to die than he,' answered Conway, slowly.—'Physically, of course not ; you have given your proofs to the contrary, my good fellow. But psycho- logically, you would imagine you ran a risk.'—' Perhaps ; yet on my word, but for my wife and Nelly, I would almost chance it. They wouldn't miss my company, it's true,' he added, bitterly ; ' but you, see, I can't afford to die just yet, for their sakes.'—' Come, come, Conway, you must not talk like that. You are a young man still, younger than I. There are years of life before you yet, and where there's life, there's hope,—the chances of promotion, a stroke of luck at the races.'—' You said you hated cant, just now,' interrupted Conway ; entertain a similar dislike. Let us drop this subject.'"
Not only in the broad lines of description and dialogue is Penni- cuick's character painted with great effect, but also in the slight, light touches, which tell of the completeness of the image in the mind of the author, and the great care of his representa- tion. The progress of demoralisation in the man when he has perpetrated his great villainy, the intensifying of the evil in him, the fruitless efforts of his hitherto invincible will to drive away remorse, its coming up with him ; its final victory ; all these are so ably depicted, the working-out of the wretched creature's fate is so deeply interesting, that the remainder of the story, all that comes after the accomplishment of that fate, is dull and tame iu comparison. The relations between Conway and his wife, and the thoroughly tragic story of the latter, are points in the novel which it would be difficult to praise too highly ; there is perfect truth and real pathos in the hopeless, though restrained. grief of the woman who feels that it is too late for ever for her,— that the past unkindness is never to be effaced ; and there are great power in the swift suspicion, the persistent belief, the determination to confront Pennicuick, of the poor, unloved wife, who, with all her faults towards him, knew her husband's char- acter better than all the world beside, and knew him to be incapa- ble of the base and truculent outrage which was the alleged cause of his execution. The fatal interview between Pennicuick and Mrs. Conway is in the beat sense dramatic.
The slight comic element in the book, supplied by the Ward- laws, an excellent but eccentric pair, who take pity on Nelly Conway, and make themselves generally useful, is rather forced.. The author had to brighten up his story a little, the tension had to be relaxed at times ; but it is evident that the necessity was a vexation to him,—the diversion is not very skilful, and its method and material are far-fetched. The elders have it all to them- selves, in the success of the best novel of the season ; and this is not the least remarkable fact in connection with it.
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