ONWARDS! BUT WHITHER?
A TITLE which suggests both seriousness and speculation, and a motto from Mr. Carlyle,—" What then ? Is the heroic inspira- tion we name—Virtue—but some passion, some bubble of the blood, bubbling in the direction others profit by ? "—may pos- sibly deter some persons who do not like novels which deal with problems and illustrate theories from reading Miss Bewicke's book. We can understand such a deterrent influence, for we, too, like stories, and not studies ; but in the present instance, those who yield to it will make a mistake, and miss the reading of a remarkably pleasant and interesting novel. The author has been much better than her intentions, which were evidently very philosophical indeed. She has been beguiled and fascinated by her own story, and without losing sight of the seriousness and the speculativeness of her design, she has allowed them to blend with rather than to direct the narrative, which is a striking one.
There is not in reality any resemblance between Onwards and Hawthorne's famous Transformation, beyond the general outlines of a story in which a young girl of exceptional talent and artistic taste, not satisfied to let the world wag without asking it why, finds herself at Rome, surrounded with admirers of various ranks and nationalities, with whom she does not flirt, but philosophises ; but probably no one will read the opening chapters of the one book without being reminded of the other. Something of the same inconsequent abruptness, breaking into lives and characters suddenly, without preliminary accounting for them, and the marking-out of individuals into distinct types, of which each re- presents a system of thought, cause Miss Bewicke to recall Hawthorne. There, however, the resemblance ends ; her people, her fancies, the suggestions, and the associations of Rome, its art-life and its religious life, are not bor- rowed by her, or even tinged for her. The three young men who are types of the three modes of thought which the author traces in their influence and action throughout the story are all cleverly drawn ; but the third, the cousin, Gaspard, the fiercely orthodox, brave, uncompromising, rather inhuman, yet ardently helpful Lieutenant in the Papal Zouaves, is the most interesting and original of the three. The Russian and the German we have met before under other names. We find the three gathered round Cdcile Methuen, " a young girl no way remarkable in feature, yet with a face full of meaning—eyes, mouth, and forehead, all telling of long and earnest thought—well-shaped, expressive hands, lightly clasped in one another, as they rested on the table ; and a little grey serge dress, only adding another shade of grey to her- general colourlessness." This is not a very promising description. There is no reason why a clever girl, who can think and talk as Cecile Methuen does, should not have a good complexion and • Onwards! but Whither? a We Study. By A. E. N. Newirke. London : Elder, and Co. wear a pretty dress; but the author makes up for this little touch of affectation afterwards, and the grey gown turns up like the wedding-dress of the lowly maiden who married a landscape- painter, and found herself the wife of the Lord of Burleigh. Prince Ousarof, Hermann Werner, and Gaspard de Montbrison are indicated in the following sentences :— " Truth is one and indivisible,' the officer in the Papal Zouaves was saying, in harsh, grating tones, at. once laying down the law and throwing the apple of discord into the little circle.—' Truth is one, perhaps, but infinitely divisible, is it not ?' said the English girl Truth is a scarecrow that people have invented for themselves. It is an imagin- ation. No ! all the world ought to form but one nation, and all men ought to be equal. Then, enjoying Fraternity and Equality, there would be no need to quarrel any more about Truth,' and the German sipped calmly his cup of coffee. But it is Truth alone that gives a meaning to life ; if there were no Truth, of what use would be judgment or reason? No, Truth exists somewhere, everywhere perhaps, if one could but perceive it. It is infinite, although it is one, and a life-time is not long enough to pursue the search of it. It is the only occupation worthy of a reasonable being,' and the sad, dreamy eyes of the Russian seemed to pierce into the far, dark corners of the room, as if there, as everywhere, now as always, he were pursuing the only occupation worthy of a reasonable being. —' Truth is ours. We have it,' said the Zouave. Who can say he has it ? Is Truth so little that any human intelligence can contain it all entire ? No one can ever hope to possess it, yet every one ought to search after it'—' Of what use a search that cannot succeed,' interposed the German. 'That sort of wild-goose chase was all very well in the infancy of the world, before man was fully developed or knew his own powers ; but this century is a little too positive for anything of the hind. We only care for that which we can see and touch, and which it is possible to enjoy,—money, and the goods that money brings.'"
Of course, the three men fall in love with Cecile, who has, in her pretty, practical, excellent, but uninteresting sister, Lettice- whose very prettiness stands in her way, and who is "rounded out of all expression, like the hand-writing of an office-clerk "—an admirable foil. Their respective proceedings harmonise with the key-note struck in the foregoing passage ; the German is abrupt, self-possessed,— and refused; the Russian is dreamy, deferential,— and beloved ; the Papal Zouave is fiercely zealous for the conver- sion of Cecile to his own faith, at any cost of suffering to her or to himself, and ultimately makes a grand sacrifice, whose nature we must not disclose, because the reader will like to read the story for himself, and we must not take off the edge of his pleasure. Gaspard de Montbrison is admirably drawn, in his high-handed absolutism, his arrogant contempt either for belief differing from his own or a mental attitude of doubt ; his bravery, loyalty, credulity, harshness, and general ignorance ; the antagonism between himself and Lettice, whose influence over Cecile's imagi- native nature he feels is working against his ; and the way in which he is subsequently made to tell iu the story, are all brought out with skill and effect. The story is not controversial in any unpleasant sense, nor is it pedantic, though it deals with subjects higher and more complex than we usually find introduced into novels. Some descriptions of Italian scenery and a few of the most famous objects of Italian art—all in the sense of illustrating the mental attitudes of the beholders—are written with much brightness and freshness, and they fall in naturally with the narrative, which such descriptive passages rarely do. A retrospective account of the early girlhood of Cecile and Lettice is not so successful as their story from the time we find them at Rome, travelling with their brother, who is one of the most charming, natural, un- consciously pathetic persons we have ever met in a novel, and who is quietly dying, unsuspected by either himself or them, before the eyes of his sisters. We do not believe the most ardent girl-students ever wrote Spanish exercises on the slates on the roof of a pig-sty, or that a portion of the writing would be legible after a couple of years, supposing they had done so ; and Cecile's debut and discomfiture as a " sculptress " (horrid and inad- missible word) is not necessary, and not pleasant. The incident of the nude statue, to which society takes exception as a girl's work, does not form or even considerably modify Cecile's char- acter, and we cannot help asking what is the use of it ? The author is superior to most novelists in her power of making her readers see and feel her heroine's talent ; she does not merely say she was clever and original, but we don't believe it a bit the more because she studied anatomy and sculptured a nude nymph. The learning of Lettice, who makes up her mind, " when quite a little child," that she will read the seven great Epics in their original tongues, and carries out her resolution " without a master," is equally needless. Lettice plays an interesting and efficient part in a remarkably attractive though very melancholy story, but it gains nothing from her excep- tional learning. Indeed, for a young lady so conversant with other languages, she speaks her own rather incorrectly. "I have done it because I was told to," and the use of " me " for "I" in several instances, are among the inelegancies of Lettice'spractical, sensible, and pleasant talk. The author also makes Gaspard de Montbrison take strange liberties with his mother-tongue, when he- subscribes himself, in his fiery, persuasive letters, half religious, half lover-like, to Cecile, " Votre ami en Christ," an impossible phrase for a Frenchman to use, because it is not French at all, while the correct version of the author's meaning would not be- employed by any Catholic layman.
The story of Prince Ousarof is very interesting, but very sad, and the author does well to brighten it up, by the introduc- tion of his charming sister Olga, and her love-story. She does well, too, to rescue Werner from his infidelity, and still to pre- serve his identity so consistently that we see, as a last glimpse of him, this :—" Hermann is proud and a Prussian, and does not like to talk of thankfulness, even to his Creator." Our last glimpse- of Cecile we must not reveal. She is a most interesting creation, more so, perhaps, by her faults and mistakes, than through the fine characteristics with which the author invests this careful,. elevated, and suggestive life-study.'
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