ELEANOR'S VICTORY.*
Tax disadvantage of the position which Miss Braddou holds is that she cannot now retire from it. She is known for a certain sort of work, and people go to her for that peculiar work, and would consider themselves very ill-treated if she offered them any other. She is liked for her bad women ; and while she is able to furbish up a fresh figure of the kind for every novel, her popu- larity may not undergo much change. But even a woman may tire of depicting her sex in the blackest colours, or her imagina- tion may be too exhausted to bear a fresh strain upon it,, or she may play upon her one idea so long that at last no one will listen to her. Miss Braddon has tried to avoid the last danger, but, as might have been foreseen, she has not escaped the second. Another story of bigamy was impossible. Forbid her bigamy, and Miss Braddon has little to tell the world that can possibly induce it to turn aside for a moment to listen to her. It is the one string to her instrument, and that removed, the rest is only .fit for the fire. It is taking away the prop upon which she leans. Evidently she w:shed to make her present heroine as wicked as Lady Audley, and as artful as Aurora Floyd, but the hand trembled, awl the heart, surely not unnaturally, seems to have sickened over the task. Eleanor Vane talks like a stage imp, and acts like a weak-minded woman, and as she does nothing extra- ordinary, and is very silly and uninteresting, and only has one serious quarrel with her husband, which is peaceably made up, Miss Bradden's admirers will for the first time fed a little impa- tient with her. Another such book will be perilous to her fame, or nworiety, or by whatever name her success may be called. It is true that she introduces us to this new heroine by giving us a view of her andes, and although this is a novelty, and promises well, the disappointment will probably b3 keen when it is found that the interest in her is little more than ancle- deep.
For her ancles were pretty—this is the principle idea of her heroine with which Miss Braddon wishes us to start. They could be "seen below the hem of her neat muslin frock," they were "rounded and slender," and in every respect what we are trained to think those portions of the frame ought to he. Of course she is beautiful, and has fine eyes. He profile was "sharply defined against a blue background of summer sky," and her stomach was
• ffleartor's Viet ,ry. By M. E. Braddon, Author of "Lady Audley's Secret," "Aurora Floyd,' dso. London: Tinsley Brothers. 1863. finer than her profile, for we are expressly told that, though on board a Dieppe steamer, she could eat jam tarts and "not be sea-sick." The author knew that she had very little for this young lady to do, and hence she is described with such abandon. She is a fairy, a "bright virginal little creature." Sometimes we find her" blushing to the roots of her auburn hair," at others we see her "white shoulders gleaming" against a bronze dress. We are permitted to behold her shoulders, but after her mar.. riage (she marries in a hum-drum fashion) we hear no more of her ancles. Miss Braddon sacrifices her powers of description thus far to a sense of propriety. The clouds descend round the lady's lower extremities, but leave the upper unconcealed. This is, no doubt, art—at any rate, it it as near an approach to art as anything we can detect in the novel.
Now Eleanor Vane is the daughter of a broken-down, ex- travagant old gentleman who lives in Paris. He has an elder daughter by his first wife,—named Hortensia—to whom he applies for money with which to educate Eleanor. Hortensia sends dyer to him the sum of £100, but, unfortunately, the old man is entrapped into a gambler's den, and never leaves it alive. The money is all lost, the gambler poisons himself, and leaves a note to Eleanor, telling her to be revenged on one "Robert Lan—" his destroyer. The rest of the name is torn off. Eleanor vows to devote her life to this vengeance. She would now be alone, but for a scene-painter who knew her at school, and who is the funny man of the story. This is some of his fun :—
"Good night, my dear ; I mustn't keep you standing here, like this, though parting is such sweet sorrow, that I really shouldn't have the heart to go away to-night if I didn't mean to call tomorrow."
This humourous gentleman does not serve to make the book at all amusing, though he is useful for the purposes of the plot. This is all, indeed, that Miss Braddon ever, introduces a man into a story for. He is a walking gentleman, or a dog-fancier, or, like the scene-painter, a good-natured dunderhead. The nearest approach she can make to a representation of the manly character is to draw a woman disfigured with more than masculine vices. The scene-painter might almost have been called a 4" utility man," for he is only brought in to talk when the other characters are wandering about the stage without an object. He has an elderly aunt, with whom Eleanor takes refuge, until by Horten- sia's management she goes into the family of a Mrs. Darrell, as companion to a frivolous young lady named Laura Mason. Mrs. Darrell has a son, who turns out to be the very "Robert Lance" against whom Eleanor has vowed vengeance—Lance being a name he asumed in Paris. When she first suspects this, she has some thought of enticing young Darrell to suppose that she is in love with him, and then breaking his heart. She also ponders whether it would not be safer to induce him to commit a mime and betray him, and eventually marries a man she cares nothing for, solely that she may have a better chance of revenging herself on Darrell. It would be tiresome to explain how all this happens ; suffice it to say that the dramatic action of the story actually begins at this stage of it. Eleanor's husband, Mr. Monck- ton, is jealous of Eleanor because she watches Darrell about and appears so interested in his fate. At length he deserts her, so strong become his suspicions. The obvious course for the wife would have been to explain all to her husband, and there is no reason given for her not doing so ; but there would have been an end to that part of the interest of the tale which arises from Miss Braddon's old machinery— a misunderstanding between husband aid wife. Mr. Monckton was really the very man who could have rendered her the greatest assistance, but she need- lessly and foolishly builds up a wall of separation between them. Then she discovers that Darrell has forged a will, and leaves her husband's house to travel as companion with a lady. While abroad she meets with the very man who has the real will which Darrell forged. She obtains possession of the docummt just in time to see the scene-painter and her husband come in at the door, the husband ready to receive her with open arms. So far all was well, but Eleanor had not yet completed her revenge. "No; the lurid star that had beckoned. her forward still shone before her. It was so near now, that its red splendour filled the universe." This sounds portentous of big events,, and although it occurs in the last volume, one begins to think that something will happen after all. "Lancelot Darrell, the destroyer of her dead father, became paramount in her thoughts." She hastens home with her husband, and goes straight to the house which Darrell occupies by virtue of the forged will. She "waved" her husband back, and went up to the ruthless destroyer, with her head lifted, and her nest its quivering"—
much as a horse would have done, apparently. This is a thrilling' moment, but unfortunately nothing comes of it. Eleanor abuses him roundly, calls him trickster, cheat, forger, and so forth, and then turns her attention to Darrell's mother. "Bali!" she cries, "do you know that my father, a poor helpless old man, a lonely, friendless old man, a decayed gentleman, killed himself because of your son?' The mother falls upon her knees, "with her head flung back," and cries, "Forgive him for my sake. . . . Give him to me. God has given him to me. Woman, what right have you to take him from me ?" After a little more of this raving, Eleanor does forgive Darrell, and even suffers him to live in the hcuse of his ancestor. This is her "victory." She triumphs over her passion for revenge. The moral is good, but it makes a very dull ending to the story.
It is difficult to conceive of such a book as this satisfying any reader whose taste is not utterly gone. As we have said, there is some of the old machinery, but we see tco much of the ropes and pulleys by which it is worked. There is a night scene in a garden, with Eleanor out of doers and her husband looking after her, suspecting that she is with Darrell. The same circumstance, it will be remembered, happened with Lady Audley and Aurora Floyd. There is also a forgery, an elopement, a suicide, and a chapter describing a man in delirium tremens. Then there is a mystery surrounding the chief characters—a "secret" in Dar- rell's life, and "a shadow on- Gilbert Monekton's." Yet, the story is weak, and flimsy, and dull. Before the reader reaches the end of the first volume he perceives that he is being played with. Nor is there anything in the work to give it a value apart from the mere plot. We have seen that Miss Braddon can depict the bad side of the female nature, but when her women cease to be bad, they become poor flabby creatures, talking like "poor Poll," and acting like spoilt children. It is a bad sign when her heroine's nostrils don't quiver. Would Miss Braddon be able to interest her readers in a really good woman ? Would she be able to associate with such a character the power, and energy, and force that characterized her "Aurora Floyd? " If she can do this, it would be a boon to give the result to the e orld instead of stretching out this weary line, of stage queens and bigamists, who have already done as much as could reasonably be wished for the morality and taste of the public. We greatly fear that an intriguing woman is the noblest work of Miss Braddon's hands. Here, for instance, is the talk of a woman who has no great harm in her :—" Oh, please don't look so surprised, you make me fancy
I'm a guy I want some one who can play the friend, asyl be agreeable and lively, and I'm sure you're the very person, ativ, and it' you only think you can like me as well as I'm sure I shall like you, we can settle the business at owe." In a conversa- tion between Hortensia and Eleanor the chief points are these
Hortensia!' "Well!' " Good Heavens!" "Can this be true?" No doubt M as Braddon knows how cultivated women converse, but she makes little use of her knowledge in her stories. In like manner she can describe the house and the garden, the dogs and the horses, the furniture and the very door-knocker of a gentle- man's house, hut the inmate she makes a mongrel kind of being who would not be out of place in a footman's livery. Eleanor's fattier was'a gentleman, but we can see in him only a vulgar sot, incapable of so ordinary a virtue as telling the truth and keeping his word. We may be interested in Miss Braddon's characters, but we never respect them. Of the higher qualities of a novelist, those which hand down reputations to posterity, she has as yet given no sign. That she has done so much with so very little is only another proof that the world as it grows older does not grow much wiser, and that straws will tickle still as they did of yore. There may remain something to be done for human enlightenment, some unexplored height for the human intellect to reach, even after this generation and its wonderful works have altogether passed away.
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