THE accomplished lady whom we may be permitted to call
" Elizabeth " has the advantage of a sympathetic knowledge of two different civilisations. She can judge their foibles and their merits from the standpoint of the kindly spectator, and observe the ironies of their interaction. Here is the true material for comedy, and as pure light-hearted comedy it would be difficult to surpass her latest story. We still remain firm in our allegiance to the Adventures in Biigen, but, if it is possible to classify where all is so admirable, we should give the new book second place. Priscilla is a Princess, the daughter of the Grand Duke of Lothen-Kunitz, and, like all correct Princesses, she has "golden eyelashes and eyebrows, and hair that is more red than gold." Her sisters were married to orthodox Grand Dukes, but Priscilla did not care for suitors. Under the instruction of Fritzing, the Court librarian, she had been given a glimpse of a wider world. She was tired of endless Court etiquette and pedigrees and a luxury which smothered her soul. She wanted to live the Higher Life and get rid of the cobwebs of Lothen-Kunitz ; so she commanded Fritzing to help her to run away. And run away they did; and as they leave the capital on bicycles Priscilla descends from the clouds with a vengeance, for she desires to box a policeman's ears. In the train she has great trouble with garrulous fellow-passengers, and in crossing the Channel she is haunted with fear of pursuit. But in the end she and the much-tormented Fritzing reach the little Somerset village of Symford, and settle down resolutely to the Higher Life. But parochialism is not the perquisite of a Court, as poor Priscilla soon finds. A beautiful lady calling herself "Miss Schutz," with an eccentric uncle and apparently unlimited wealth, cannot hurl herself into an English village without complications. Symford is a model hamlet, full of smiling rustics and Bible-reading old women, with a Lady Bountiful to look after them ; but in one short fortnight Priscilla succeeds in upturning its foundations. The only two young men fall in love with her; she gives the children a feast on Sunday, and not only ruins their digestions, but upsets the training of years ; she gives the model old woman, Mrs. Jones, five-pound notes, and fetches her rum from the inn, with the result that Mrs. Jones is visited one night by a murderer. Worst of all, she engages all the women as servants in rotation at extravagant wages, and the economics of village society rock to their base. And then suddenly she and Fritzing find they have no money left, and that the Higher • Life has turned out to be quite sordid and comfortless. At the proper moment the Prince, her lover, arrives, and realising that Courts have no monopoly of cobwebs, she' goes back with him to her old life.
The whole tale moves in the bright, clear air of comedy. Even the murderer of Mrs. Jones, who is necessary to put a point on Priscilla's misdeeds, is a fantastic, attractive person, about whom we have no real misgivings. At the same time, there is much shrewd understanding of life, and the characters, * The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight. By the Author of "Elizabeth and her German Garden." London : Smith. Elder, and Co. Be.)
even the fairy-tale Priscilla, live as truly as if they had come out of some sombre study in realism. Lady Shuttleworth, the Lady Bountiful of the village, is drawn with a friendly hand, and her son, the unfortunate Tussie, who represented the eggs which must be broken in the making of omelettes, is done with equal kindliness. Not so Mrs. Morrison, the vicar's wife, who is a cruel picture of the "true snob, the hectorer of the humble, the devout groveller in the courtyards of the great." "Elizabeth" is not fond of the female clergy;
witness the remarkable lady in the Adventures in. Iliigen. If we had to choose one episode to praise especially, it would be the scene at Baker's Farm when Mrs. Morrison and Lady
Shuttleworth condescend to come to tea, and are dis- missed curtly by Priscilla when they begin to bore her.
Priscilla herself is one of the most engaging characters we have met in fiction for years. The strength of the book lies in its faithful picture of the contrast of two modes of life, brought on this occasion sharply together,—a true comedy- motive when, as in this case, both are adequately under- stood. Grace, an unfailing urbanity, and a delicate wit are the main qualities of the style. When " Elizabeth " chooses she can write with a rare eloquence, but her common mood is one of half-ironic, half-friendly criticism, viewing her characters from the outside and taking the reader wholly into her confidence. She frequently halts to moralise—a habit for which she will be freely forgiven—for her short excursions into the didactic show her curious charm at its best :—
" Priscilla wanted to run away. This, I believe, is considered an awful thing to do, even if you are only a housemaid or some- body else's wife. If it were not considered awful, placed by the world high up on its list of Utter Unforgivablenesses, there is, I suppose, not a woman who would not at some time or other have run. She might come back, but she would surely have gone. So bad is it held to be that even a housemaid who runs is unfailingly pursued by maledictions more or less definite according to the education of those she has run from ; and a wife who runs is pursued by social ruin, it being taken for granted that she did not run alone. I know at least two wives who did run alone. Far from wanting yet another burden added to them by adding to their lives another man, they were anxiously endeavouring to get as far as might be from the man they had got already. The world, foul hag with the downcast eyes and lascivious lips, would not believe it possible, and was quick to draw its dark mantle of disgrace over their shrinking heads. One of them, unable to bear this, asked her husband's pardon. She was a weak spirit, and now lives prostrate days, crushed beneath the unchanging horror of a husband's free for- giveness. The other took a cottage and laughed at the world. Was she not happy at last, and happy in the right way ? I go to see her sometimes, and we eat the cabbages she has grown herself. Strange how the disillusioned find their peace in cabbages."
The narrative is of the loose " picaresque " type, flowing easily and almost careleesly from episode to episode, but at the same time the author shows her constructive skill in avoiding all tediousness.
The Professor's Legacy. By Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick. (Edward Arnold. 6s.)—Mrs. Sidgwick gives us another of her vivacious, wholesome, incisively written romances in The Professor's Legacy. The plot shows no special originality or ingenuity. That a young English squire of ample means should, after a brilliant University career, devote himself for several years to scientific research as the assistant of a German Professor is not impossible, but it is strange that the Professor should have remained in ignorance of his disciple's wealth. The Professor vanishes early from the scene, and Will Deere is left as guardian of his only daughter. Rosamund is young, unworldly, and susceptible ; she falls in love with a brilliant and genial musician, and, in a fit of pique on the discovery that Christian Witt regards her with merely friendly feelings, and that her aunt, a sprightly but heartless Viennese widow, is at once jealous of her charms and bored by her company, marries Deere off-hand, and is installed as the mistress of a large country house in the North of England. The situation is fraught with possibilities of disaster, for Dacre is something of a prig, and though considerate, and even chivalrous, to his young wife, does little to help her out of her difficulties, and shows a deplorable blindness in failing to recognise the growth of her genuine affection for him. But while there is always an under- current of seriousness, the nrxrative and dialogue abound in gaiety and humour. Mrs. Sidgwick, like "Elizabeth," knows the strength and the weakness of the German and English character, she deals faithfully with both races, and her sharply contrasted and clear- cut portraits of various social types are done with admirable verve. Aunt Betty, the Viennese widow, is a most engaging minx: capricious, unscrupulous, shrewd, and witty; excellent, too, are the strapping, slangy Amazon, Mrs. Eastwood, and Joan Deere, with her ludicrous weakness for animals. Musicians will be attracted by the sympathy and intelligence Mrs. Sidgwick shows in handling an art which most novelists maltreat unmercifully— the introduction of Brahms's "Sapphische Ode" is as felicitous as it is unusual in a work of this sort—and all lovers of genial and healthy sentiment will appreciate the mingled tenderness and high spirits of this charming international comedy.
The Man from America. By Mrs. Henry de in Pasture. (Smith, Elder, and Co. 6s.)—Mrs. de In Pasture has many qualities desirable in a romancer whose main aim is to cheer and amuse. Without absolutely eliminating all disagree,ables, she shows a quite unfashionable disinclination to wound the feelings of the gentle reader. Thus the death-rate in The Man from America—though the narrative is spread over some twenty years —is quite extraordinarily low; indeed, there is only one death amongst an unusually large list of dramatis personae, and no feeling stronger than a mild regret is awakened by its occurrence. Another instance of Mrs. de la Pasture's kindliness is to be found in her inability to depict a villain : stinginess and snobbery are the worst vices held up to reprobation, and the offenders are treated with remarkable gentleness. Again, nothing could be more liberal than the provision made by the author for her favourites. With three benevolent American millionaires in the cast, the reader is early assured that the lovers will be well looked after, and the sequel fully justifies this confidence. As for the titular hero, Mr. Iron Brett, he is, though a most admir- able and high-minded young man, somewhat too reserved in manner to be a romantic figure. Romance, however, is attrac. tively represented by his vivacious cousin Zoo; by an impecunious but handsome and accomplished V.0.; by Kitty and Rosaleen Trethewy, two charming young ladies of mixed French, Irish, and Cornish ancestry ; and by that fine old gentleman their grandfather, the Vicomte de Nauroy, an émigré of '48, who combines distinction and simplicity in a very engaging way. The scene is chiefly laid in Devonshire, and out of the mutual relations of the West Country folk, of mushroom magnates, American millionaires, and British aristocrats, Mrs. Henry de la Pasture has woven a very genial and entertaining romance.
The Irrational Knot. By Bernard Shaw. (A. Constable and Co. 6s.)—It is characteristic of our impatient age that whereas hitherto it has been reserved to an indiscreet posterity to exhume the still-born early products of literary celebrities, that practice is now forestalled by successful authors before they reach the confines of middle age. The Irrational Knot was written in 1880, when Mr. Shaw was twenty-three ; nobody, as he tells us, would publish it in book form, though it saw the light in a propagandist magazine edited by Mrs. Besant ; and, to be quite honest, we are not surprised at the inhospitality of Paternoster Row. Its cleverness is beyond question ; so too is the frigidity of its characterisation. But it is unnecessary to dwell on the crudeness and artificiality of this protest against "ready-made morality," for these drawbacks are exposed in the autobiographical pre- face which is the chief attraction of the book, and discounts the most hostile criticism by its engaging, if occasionally im- pudent, candour. Mr. Shaw disowns responsibility for the views put forward in his novel, on the ground that "the substance of our bodies (and consequently of our souls) is shed and renewed at such a rate that no part of us lasts longer than eight years," and that he cannot be expected to take any lively interest in the novels of his literary great-grandfather. This ingenious apologia, however, inspires us with serious misgivings as to Mr. Shaw's future. Twenty years hence, if he continues to develop at his present rate, he may have become a Tory Peer with violent Jingoistic proclivities and a passion for field sports. Meantime, we can cordially recommend the first twenty-five out of the four hundred odd pages which the book contains. Mr. Shaw is always the best of company when he writes about himself, for his wit is even greater than his vanity.
The Travelling Thirds. By Gertrude Atherton. (Harper and Brothers. 6s.)—Mrs. Atherton, instead of giving us, as in one of her recent novels, an Austrian Archduchess as a heroine, contents herself in this book with a Californian heiress, whose strange disposition and actions are explained by the fact that she has Indian blood in her veins. The book is a description of the journeys in Spain of this young lady and a party of cousins, whose father and mother act as her chaperons. Catalina, the heroine, insists upon their all travelling third-class,—for the excellent reason that they cannot afford to go first. Their adventures are fairly good reading, though it is difficult to believe that an American girl would carry on a love affair with s peasant who turns out to be a brigand. The heroine of this adventure, it must be said, is not Catalina, but one of her cousins. Catalina's own love affair with a conventional Englishman is, on the other hand, a little commonplace. The book as a whole is rather too suggestive of the pages of a guide-book ; but if slight, the story is amusing, and is written with Mrs. Atherton's usual vivacity.
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