THE PURPLE SCHOOL OF FICTION.*
Mae PnEscorr is a clever writer, but she belongs to—perhaps we ought to say she leads—the school of what we may be called
purple transcendentalism in American fiction—purple with the dyes
of rich and manifold metaphor, transcendental with various difficult creeds turning on the unity of nature and the identity of nature's
various foices. Yet Miss Prescott can sketch character with real spirit, and scenery with real force, did she not overlay the latter with a little too many coats of colouring. Miss Prescott wishes to be to fiction what Turner in his least sober days wished to be to landscape-painting. We remember a picture of his, called" The Angel standing in the Sun," in which no human ingenuity could discern anything distinct except a vague round spot of bright orange, like a pool of mustard, and a little dog advancing cautiously upon it with that vague suspicion of mustard which little dogs always betray. Where the angel was—the pool of mustard was conceivably the sun—we never had even a faint guess.
But the picture was not really characteristic of the great artist who painted it, except in showing that tendency to a profligate love of colour which always struggled in his mind with his equally grand conceptions of solidity and form Miss Prescott expresses in language the same inordinate passion for colour ; but with her it is not, as it was with Turner, the glow of sunset over an artistic sense which began its life with submitting to the severest discipline in outline, light, and shade. With her it is the first efflorescence of an enthusiastic talent still almost in that childish stage when a single deep rich colour sinks into the eye, and almost intoxicates it with delight. The Amber Gods was dyed somewhat fancifully with this luxuriant joy in colour. But we spoke and thought of it then rather as a promise of power than as an offence against art. It has, however, so much increased upon her in this tale (which is nevertheless on the whole abler, more substantial and original than her first volume) that it becomes a critic's duty to warn her that if she heap on the colours with this sort of tropical generosity she will soon lose all eye for outline, solidity, and strength. It is well to remember that colour after all, either in nature or the human face, expresses thought and feeling almost accidentally, certainly with far lees intrinsic force and naturalness than form. The sculptor who cuts in white mar- ble can express almost everything that the painter can express, and can express solidity, reality, and strength in addition, which mere colour cannot. Light and shade is the maximum of colour needful for expressive art, and all the rest, though it has a great beauty of its own, has also a voluptuous, disguising power of its own, and a tendency to divert the attention from deeper touches. When Miss Prescott talks, for instance, of the "rosy warmth and amethystine glow of prayer,"—she wants us to associate two colours, pink and violet, with divine rest and peace. We should be disposed to say that nothing could express less happily what she is aiming at. There may be some naturalness in connecting rosy warmth with human joy, and a violet twilight with human peace ; but both read like hectic disguises of the soul, in the con- nection in which she wishes us to use them. The Bible with true instinct, though it uses all the most gorgeous colours to describe the splendour of the New Jerusalem, never associates with the life of the soul in God any colour more gaudy than pure white light. "The glory of God did lighten it and the Lamb was the light thereof." There is something in the decomposed rays of coloured light which gives a richness at the expense of reality, and produces the effect of human art and dress. Then Miss Prescott's pictures swim in colour. The tints are not only crowded in too lavishly, but they are exaggerated when you have them. Take this, for instance :— " But as he idly turned it over, two little papers slipped from between the leaves and fluttered to the floor. He gathered them. They were the old amusements of Ruth's careless leisure. One, the likeness of a bunch of gentians just plucked from the swampy mould, blue as heaven, their vapoury tissue—as if a breath dissolved it—so tenderly curled and fringed like some radiate cloud, fragile, fresh, a creation of the earth's fairest finest effluence, dreams of innocence and morning still half veiled in their ineffable azure. The other, only a single piece of the wander- ing dog-tooth, with its sudden fl;my blossom starting up from the languid stem like a serpent's head, full of fanged expression, and with its mottled leaf so dewy, so dark, so cool, that it seemed to hold in it- self the reflection of green-gloomed transparent streams running over pebbly bottoms."
* Asarias: as BOK*. By Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Bostoa Ticknor London; Sampson Low. Here is metaphor—which is the colour of thought—crowded with a thickness which as much injures the flavour as a sea of butter injures the flavour of a muffin or a tea-cake. The gentians are first "blue as heaven, their vapottry tissue,"—well that is not a new idea, but may pass. But then they are "tenderly curled and fringed like a radiate cloud," and what is a radiate cloud ? Perhaps a cloud with rays streaming down behind it, but then we do not see the likeness to the gentian. Then, whereas before it was of the " vapoury tissue of the heaven," it is now "of the earth's fairest -finest effluence," and finally, it is a "dream of innocence and morning still half-veiled in ineffable azure." Now we say that gentian is as much overdressed in Miss Prescott's language as if she had put the flower itself into a gaudy gilt-and-blue Bavarian glass vase to show it off.
Yet Miss Prescott can write with simplicity and force. Her sketch of Ruth Yetton in this tale is a little too gushing. A creature of such emotions as hers is scarcely fit for life ; but Azarian, the cold, vain, clever, self-absorbed lover, with his eyes of steel and his aversion to any one who resists his influence, is a vivid sketch, and the Russian lady, Madame Saratov, with her arti- ficial softness and dramatic pietism, is the best sketch of all. Take the following, for instance. Madame Saratov has been interfering in Ruth Yetton's love-affair, and advising her, without any right of either intimacy or affection to do so, that she is throwing herself away on .Azarian, and injuring him by her submissive worship as well as herself :—
" Ruth rose, and her little foot scattered the crimson cushions with vehemence.—' Madame Saratov, if you play with fire' you will be burned ! ' said she.—The lady started. Qu'as-tu? What have I done ? ' she cried. Trespassed on forbidden borders ? Do you know,' she asked, raising her eyebrows with sudden thought-dissipating effect, 'how they used to fix the landmarks in Germany? Take the children to the spot and box their ears there. You are not so cruel, ma petite dedaigneuse ? Nay, but I pray thee of thy clemency ! that she would go but to smile, and sonner l'ang4lus ! Forgiven, then, at last? Let us see how the night goes is etoile,' said she, drawing the unwilling Ruth with her to the window,'Ale! what a mite you are!' and pulling aside the curtain. How white the moonlight wraps the town ! It is like an emanation from all the sleep. How sublime is this sleep !—the way in which man trusts the forces to do without him,—the careless reliance that by daybreak the world will have rolled round to morning. Striking one. It seems to me at night as if the stars struck the hours. How that spire points upward, and loads the prayer !
"Vous qui pleura; venez is ce Die; car il pleura. - Vous qui souffrez, venez is lui, car il gudrit. Vous qui tremble; venez is lui, car il sourit. Vous qui passe; venez is lui, car il demeure."
And Madame Saratov gave Ruth one of those lingering kisses which some women have the assurance to impress, and betook herself to her prie-dieu, at which,—as Ruth watched her from a dreamless pillow,—in her own way, she seemed to find satisfaction."
That is no common picture, and Miss Prescott being able, as she is, to outline thus distinctly and colour this truthfully, certainly need not rely on the gaudy and ungraceful luxuriance of orna- ment of which she is so fond, for literary success. She should remember De Quincey's warning against indulging in a " jewelly hemorrhage" of words and metaphor.
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