NOVELS OF THE WEEK.*
THE quota contributed to the great and ever-increasing ocean of modern fiction by Colonial writers has a freshness and vitality which more than compensates for its occasional shortcomings on the score of style and subtlety. We have recently had occasion to commend in these columns the admirable work done by Mr. Scully in the delineation of various phases of South African life, and an equally cordial welcome must be extended to Miss Howarth, the authoress of Katrina, a tale which fully maintains the impression created by her earlier novel. Fastidious readers may be repelled at the outset by a writer who opens her story with the stereotyped formula of the "solitary horseman," and has no pretensions to literary finesse. But these deficiencies in workmanship are easily outweighed by the interest of the narrative, the unaffected sincerity of the sentiment, the artistic regard for contrast shown in the choice of the dramatis persona and the consistency with which their dominant characteristics are illustrated and developed by the progress of the plot. The writer of another novel of this week has said, "Let the Justice that cries out against what men have done for women remember what they have done for men," and this might serve as a motto for Katrina, the motive of which is not the eternal duel of sex, but fraternal self - sacrifice. Allan Stanton, the hero of the story, is overshadowed in his boyhood by the superior charm of his attractive, unscrupulous brother. His father, an English farmer, has aroused the hostility of a vindictive • (1.) Katrina: a Tale of the Karoo. By Anna Howarth. London: Smith, Elder, and Co.—(2.) Mr. and Mrs. Nevin Tyson. By Mar Sinclair. London : William Blackwood and Sum—(3.) The Silver Cross. By S. R. Keightley. London : Hutchinson and 0o.—(4 ) Nanno: a Daughter of the State. By Rosa Mulholland (Lady Gilbert). London: Grant Richards.--(5.) The Forest of Bourg-Marie. By B. F. Harrison. London : Edward Arnold.—(6.) The Duke of Linden. By J. F. Charles. London : John Lane.—(7.) Curios. By Richard Marsh. London, John Long.—(8.) Mant'selle Grand•nare a Frivolity. By Fifine. London Lawrence and Bullen.—(9.) The Measure of a Man. By Livingston Prescott. London : James Nisbet and Co.—(10.) The Mawlein of the Plow. By Lord Ernest Hamilton. London : T. Fishor 13-awl:I.—a1.) The Story of Phil Enderby. By Adeline Sergeant. London : James Bowden.— (12.) A Haunted Town. By Ethel F. Heddle. London : Wells Gardner, Darton, and Co. Dutch usurer, who contrives to lure Charles Stanton into his toils, but is foiled in his efforts to ruin him and his father by Allan's prompt acceptance of his brother's responsibilities, even to the marrying of the Dutch girl whom Charles Stanton bad swindled and jilted. We may note in passing that a situation which would have been an impasse in a highly civilised society, readily admits of a solution among a patri- archal people like the Cape Dutch farmers. This is one of the advantages enjoyed by writers who deal with a less complex civilisation than ours. The gradual awakening of Stanton to the treachery of his favourite son, and the gradual growth of a genuine affection between Allan and his wife, are admirably traced in the later chapters of the story, the opening scene of which, describing a visitation of smallpox, may be recommended to the careful study of all "conscientious objectors." Miss Howarth, as we have already hinted, does not indulge in fine writing. The simple conditions of the life she depicts are beet set forth in a simple style. But she can be picturesque in a straightforward way. When her hero, sorely stricken by undeserved misunderstanding of his magnanimity, and troubled by the continuance of a terrible drought, beard ill-tidings from a friend, she describes how "he rose up and went out, feeling as if the hard blue sky were an illimitable weight, pressing down upon the groaning earth, and the brilliant sun were the revengeful, unwinking eye of some dire enemy of mankind."
Mr. and Mrs. Nevin Tyson has very little of the charm which marked its author's first essay, but it is much more striking, more daring, and infinitely more powerfuL Nevill Tyson is a man of bdargeois origin, good education, and boundless energy, who at the age of thirty-six succeeds to an estate in Leicestershire, and endeavours to settle down as a county gentleman. The essay is foredoomed to failure by his antecedents, his character, and his marriage. He is summed up well enough as a man of "no class," a bundle of paradoxes, at once British and Bohemian, cosmo- politan and barbarian, a "brute with an immortal human soul struggling perpetually to be." This glorified cad with a tempestuous past marries a pretty, vivacious, indiscreet girl — who is hypnotised by his masterful self-assertive- ness—and is more or less cut by the county. The real tragedy of this "tale of usrcht " is that of the wife, whose infatuation for her husba4 reaches such a pitch that she practically abandons her baby rather than incur the displeasure of her lord and master. Later on, in a moment of unavailing remorse, she tells her husband the truth : "They said I didn't care—and I did—I did ! It nearly broke my heart. Only I was afraid you'd think I loved him better than you, and so—I didn't take any notice of him. I thought he wouldn't mind—he was so little, you see ; and then I thought some day I would tell him." The story of the birth, the short life, and death of this luckless infant is told with merciless realism. But the tale of Mrs. Nevill Tyson's sufferings is far from being exhausted. Though she cannot quite forgive him, she cannot resist the spell of her husband's personality. Deserted on the death of her child by her husband, she consoles herself with the company of his only friend, feeling, as she tells her husband afterwards, "as if he was all that was left of you." Later on she welcomes the returning prodigal without a murmur, and saves him from being burned to death at the risk of her own life, when he is lying in a drunken sleep. His penitence is as usual short-lived, for with the loss of her beauty Molly loses her hold on his senses, and, volunteering for service in the Soudan, he leaves his disfigured and deserted wife to die alone. This exceedingly painful book is removed from the category of the ordinary novels of revolt by its impartial pessimism. If Molly is an "adorable fool," Nevill is an irresistible brute. If one cannot pardon him for his odious jealousy of his own child, it is equally hard to forgive Molly for condoning his cruelty and callousness. In short, Miss Sinclair is quite as severe on weak woman as on brute man. It is only right to say in conclusion that her book is extremely strong meat, though it is only fair to add that it is not highly seasoned.
It is good to escape from the strenuous squalor of Miss Sinclair's ruthless study in contemporary manners, and, with Dr. Keightley as our genial guide, travel backwards down time's gulf to the days of Mazarin and Madame de Chevreuse. It was a wicked and unscrupulous world, no doubt, a world of lettres de cachet, midnight assassinations, elastic consciences, and dubious morals ; but the people in it were at least sparsa that worst infirmity of modern minds,—introspection. M. de Fontanges, the gallant hero of The Silver Cross, had ma chequered a career and as lurid a past as Mr. Nevill Tyson,. but he never brooded over it. On the contrary, it gave him. positive satisfaction to reflect that he had run his Colonel through after eloping with his wife. He had no "strain of morbid sensibility," nor did he combine with "the spirit of a. soldier of fortune the nerves and temper of a spoilt child." The. Dumas revival has been responsible for a good many doloroas, exhibitions on the part of those who have aspired to wear that, magician's mantle and found it a giant's robe. Dr. Keightley, however, emerges from the ordeal with distinction. He writes with ease and even elegance, and, without any laborious parade of historical research, has caught precisely those aspects of the spirit and temper of the age that lend themselves to. romantic treatment. Chivalry, adventure, and intrigue— these form the materials out of which Dr. Keightley has woven a thoroughly exciting and entertaining romance. M. de Fontanges, who tells the story, is a mere soldier of fortune, employed as her tool in a difficult and dangerous intrigue by Madame de Chevreuse, who confidently appeals to his gal- lantry in the manner of approaching him, as she relies on hie blessed ignorance of politics and personages for the speedy execution of her design. As it turns out, a delightful Irish- man, the Vicomte de Barrymore, whom de Fontanges enliste as his ally and associate, soon takes the lead, and by his. audacity and resourcefulness immensely enhances the com- plications of the plot and the variety and diversion of thia excellent entertainment.
From the opening pages of Lady Gilbert's Nanno the reader might be tempted to believe that the slum novel had been acclimatised in Ireland. The development of the story, which has for its heroine a workhouse girl, betrayed and de- serted at seventeen, like her mother before her, happily dispels this unwelcome suspicion. Nanno Breen, thougb. born into a purgatory, fulfils in the end her fierce resolve, "By the heavens, I'll get out into the dacent world, if I was, to swing for it!" The encouragement and munificence of a. saintly priest enable her to make a fresh start as a farm, labourer. She wins the love of an honest man, and though, her insuperable reluctance to reveal the secret of her past leads to the breaking off of the match, she is able to make a, home for her child, and finds an anodyne for her grief in har a work and the friendship and respect of the only neighbour who knows her story.
Mr. S. F. Harrison lays the scene of his story amongst the French Canadians of the woodlands. Mike! Caron, the ola forest ranger of the Yamachiche county, and his trusty ally Nicolas Lauriere, the trapper, are excellent company, and throughout the The Forest of Bourg-Marie one is made to feel the singular influence exerted on character by the condi- tions of forest life. The Duke of Linden is an interesting, romance of a modern minor German Court, in which the rapprochement of two noble families, long severed by a bistorie feud, leads to a tragic sequel. The picture of the Duke of Linden's Court, where far more attention is paid to music. than morals, seems not altogether unrelated to the annals of recent German history. Mr. Richard Marsh, an admitted expert in the art of scalp-tightening, gives fresh proofs of his skill in Curios, the strange adventures—grim, grotesqne, and gruesome—of two old bachelors. The adventure of the haunted pipe and the mystery of the disembodied hand are especially good in their way, while the constant antagonism of the two narrators lends a piquancy to the recital. The sprightly and frivolous grandmother is not an altogether un- familiar character in modern fiction, but " Fifine," if not the creator of the type, has given us a very engaging example in the impecunious and irresponsible lady who sustains the title-r6le of Mam'zelle Grand'mre. The highly coloured romance of The Measure of a Man, redolent of the old yellow. back sentimentality, is quite refreshing in these days of phonographic and photographic realism. Besides, it is sc. nice, after Mr. Kipling's "Barrack-Room Ballads," to come across a sergeant who is acquainted with "Mariana in the moated grange."
Lord Ernest Hamilton's strangely named novel out- Crocketts Mr. Crockett in its uncompromising dialect. Even in the narrative of The Mawkin of the Flow one meets sad., phrases as "Four years is but a snap of the fingers in the grey dayligaun of life." Without a glossary there are many passages tate full significance of which the simple Sassenach
can only dimly apprehend. This is all the more to be regretted, for the romantic history of Marjorie Graame and her various suitors is told with abundant spirit and picturesqueness. The inexhaustible Miss Adeline Sergeant,
after whom the jaded reviewer toils in vain, like panting Time, gives us in The Story of Phil Enderby a melodramatic
idyll of the Fen country in which the grandson of a boat- builder, thanks to the ineffectual villainy of a saturnine uncle, becomes a successful landscape-painter, and enjoys the privilege of removing the gravestone erected to his own memory. The story is told with the author's wonted fluency
and alertness. Lastly, we have to thank Miss Reddle for two delightful portraits of old Scottish ladies in A Haunted Town. The gentle Miss Petronella, with her touching devotion to the memory of Mary Queen of Scots, and the shrewd Mrs.
Bethune, who found it impossible to "suffer fools gladly," are both admirable. The latter's gloss on a well-known text is
I aye rejoice to think o' the mon mansions i' heaven,' she said to her daughter-in-law earnestly when John's wife came to kiss her good-night. 'Andrew Dalgairns 'II gang there, I suppose, for he's awfu' weel-intentioned, and rale respectable ; he couldna be ony whaur else. But if there are mony mansions, we needna a' live thegither in ae hoose. At least he needna bide near me !' "
The love interest is pleasantly maintained, and the discom- fiture of the decadent poet at the eleventh hour, if somewhat artificially contrived, leaves nothing to be desired on the point of completeness.
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