DENIS DONNE. * Denis Donne may be best described as
an old Spanish drama done into the English of the nineteenth century, a story which assumes love-making to be the principal business of the human race, the only occupation allowing of conflicting interests, jarring schemes, and striking situations. The stage is crowded with characters, there are at least three heroines, and four gentlemen playing principal and tolerably equal parts, and they and the subordinate characters keep up a cross fire of intrigues, vicious and virtuous, of contrivances, and plots, and escapes which are confusing to hear of, but which when closely watched produce most amusing and tantalizing situations. There are three episodes at least in these three volumes which Miss Thomas should guard most jealously, for there is the material of an ex- cellent comedy in each of them,—the proposal of Lord Allendale to Miss Conway, the reception of Aunt Ellen by the same lady, and the thoroughly Spanish scene which cures M. Goubaud of his love, and in which Ben Jenson would have delighted. We like neither the plot nor 'its subject, the preposterous import- ance given to love-making—not love, mind—nor the sort of flavour of adultery which runs through the book as through the Spanish stories, but it is clever with a cleverness which sometimes suggests real genius, full of dashing analysis, natural dialogue, and admirably-contrived scenes. The central character, too, is in her way a creation. The novel-reading world has been rather pestered with able bad women of late, but we do not remember one exactly of Fanny Conway's type. She is in reality like Becky Sharp, but the impression she pro- duces is so totally unlike that the resemblance fades away before we have finished quite half the first volume ; she is like Made- leine Graham, but then she is not exactly wicked ; and like Jenny Bell in Bella Donna, but then she is a lady, which "plump Jenny " never is:—
" This night she looked particularly well. The heat of the day had left her rather pale, and the pallor being that warm waxen kind that brunettes alone have, caused her eyes to seem deeper and fuller, her hair looked more richly brown in the shade, more brightly golden in the light, than usual. Her dress, too, suited her well ; it looked pure, and silvery, and coolly grey, for it was white tarletane, dotted with silver- coloured silk. At her throat and waist she had a knot of pink moss- rose buds (flowers were another pet extravagance of this young lady's). On her wrists she had strings of pearls. Those latter and the rose-buds afforded occupation enough for those small restless hands of hers. She rarely did anything in the evening save talk and listen charmingly, and play with her ornaments,—not a useful life perhaps, but as useful as the majority lead on the whole. The old post-captain enrolled him- self amongst her attendants ; he brought her a cup of tea, and specially recommended some very grimy-looking biscuits which he had procured from Portsmouth with much labour and sorrow, and presented to Mrs. Pridham. Fanny took the biscuit, gratified the old sailor's heart by nibbling at it never letting him perceive how repulsive the weevily stuff was to her."
She is an adventuress in fact of the highest kind—a girl gifted with the joyous beauty sometimes though so seldom found in brunettes, and strong courage, utterly unscrupulous, determined to use her gifts to establish herself in a considerable position in life, but with a clear sense that a certain kind of morality pays, and a clear sense also that there may be things better worth having than position. She makes her fortune in a way which the authoress perhaps borrowed from a well-known historical
111 Denis Donne. By A. Thomas. London: Tinsley.
incident, but which she has made original. Fanny Conway accepts a situation as governess to a lady who is unpleasant throughout, but we are afraid too real a woman, who delights in intrigue for its own sake, who strives to win every man she comes across, including her stepson—the blot of the book, even Byron left Parisina unpleasant—not from viciousness, as commonly understood, but from a passion for conquest and excitement, who with firm ground to walk on is never happy except on ice just cracking. She craves to be always deceiving as Courvoisier craved for diamonds, not for the sake of the spoil, but to have the enjoyment of knowing that the police were after him, that his safety depended on his own skill and adroitness, that his life hung on a hairbreadth. Mrs. Donne's social life always hung on a hairbreadth, and once it was nearly lost. One of her hundred admirers, Lord Allendale, had paid her a visit during her hus- band's absence, when, as he was sighing, and protesting, and kissing the lady's hand, enter the husband. Lord Allendale, a timid man, is powerless with fright, but Mrs. Donne has probably read the old Cromwellian story, and declares that Lord Allendale has just proposed through her to her governess. The husband is half-convinced, Mrs. Donne flies to persuade Fanny Conway to abet the delusion, and is thunderstruck when told that Fanny will do it if only the game is earnest. The lady raging with baffled vanity is compelled to yield, the little adventuress walks down with the unruffled brow of complacent beauty, and before Mr. Donne accepts Lord Allendale, who, afraid of Mr. Donne, afraid of Fanny, mad with himself, mad with Mrs. Donne, is still forced to face it out or accept the position. So might Jenny Bell have done, but she would not have hated herself for doing it as Fanny Conway does, or fought on in an evil course against her own conviction as to the path which it would be happiest for her to pursue.
Nor when an aunt of Lord Allendale arrives to denounce the engagement would she with such sang froid contrive that her visitor should be locked up in a parlour as a dangerous madwoman, in a scene which has in it the elements of a roaring Adelphilarce, and yet reads perfectly natural and probable. From first to last Fanny Conway is consistent and interesting, so interesting that the most moral reader, aware that she is an adventuress, aware that she is only saved from being worse by an accident, is still far from irritated when by a bold defiance of all novelists' rules she is made finally to win the game, riot only to retain the position acquired by a fraud, but actually to fall in love with the husband whose weakness and want of spirit have enabled her to secure it. The steps of her career are so natural, the slide towards down- right vice, the incident which saves her, the growth of new and better character, are all so artistic that one half forgets that Fanny's real strength lies through five-sixths of the story in her utter unscrupulousness. The ready wit and practised courage, the self-restraint whenever a purpose is to be gained, and the fertility of resource blind us almost entirely to the moral qualities of the woman who assists a friend in an intrigue because it may possi- bly pay, secures a husband by a disgraceful device, and is only pre- vented from deceiving him by a lucky accident. Whether it is well to be so interested in such a woman is a different point, as is also the question whether a life like Dora Donne's is exactly the one worthy people with ancient ideas intend their daughters to read when they withdraw, as they are all now forced to withdraw, the old prohibition on novels. Apart from the Parisina element, however, there is nothing in the story really objectionable. Mrs. Donne pays a fearful price for her flirtations, and the impression left by the career of the adventuress is simply that a very little honesty and straightforwardness and attention to duty do more to secure happiness than all the unscrupulousness and adroitness of the most fertile brain.
The remaining characters, Lyster Donne, the " beauty man," and Denis Donne, with his overbearing selfishness, Mr. Brown the manly curate, M. Goubaud the Frenchman who believes him- self destined to a " career " and becomes a merchant's clerk, Aunt Ellen, the dictatorial, economical, purse-proud old virago of goad society, are all well drawn by touches as light and as suggestive as this, which reveals the peculiarity of Aunt Ellen :—
" All her household knew that it was very grievous to her, for when- ever Miss Crespigny was put out she had family prayers or gruel, and this night she had both. She read very long prayers, the longest she could find in a big book, which in any way bore upon her desolate, and uncared-for, and generally deserted by her family, and left to perish' alone case. When she had read these prayers in a lachrymose tone, she ordered a large basin of gruel, and then her faithful retainers knew that she was in a woeful plight indeed. Long prayers and gruel combined are calculated rather to depress than raise the spirits. I say nothing against the ultimate efficacy of either, but it is a fact that they are depressing when taken just going to bed in an aggrieved frame of mind. Though Miss Creipigny had been providentially spared maternal cares, she was in a very aggrieved frame of mind as she thought of her nephew's unseemly wooing. The gruel did not warm the cockles of her heart, but it scalded her tongue, and a sore tip to the latter is a thing that it is hard to forget in slumber. One tries continually to taste it, as it were, and fails ; and then in attempting to teat the tangibility of the elusive pimple that feels like a mountain presses a tooth upon it, and thoroughly wakes oneself up with the pain. The terribly long prayers, the composition of some Puritan ancestor whom Miss Ores- pigny disowned whenever she wasn't cross and pious, had made her throat sore ; and the gruel was unpalatable ; and the scalded tongue was a trying though slight thing ; and her idolized nephew was not going to marry the idolized niece for whom for twenty years she had saved. Poor old woman ! The scalding tears flowed so freely from her eyes that night that they took all the starch out of her night-cap borders. The Puritan ancestor's composition and the gruel had been too much for her. Strong, determined woman as she was, the unwonted vigil wore her out, and before she did finally find balm in sleep she told herself that she might as well give up the game, and suffer this great calamity to come to pass. But when morning came, she saw things in a different light, and she told herself that this thing should not come to pass without a very determined opposition on her part. She had had large flocks and herds of schemes and determinations all her life, nevertheless this special ewe lamb was very dear to her' and she would not see it sacrificed without a struggle to save it. Miss Orespigny told herself with some truth that she never yet had put her shoulder to the wheel, with anything like a will, without gaining the cause for which she exerted herself,—and hoped."
Stephanie Fordyce is, we think, a total failure, and indeed the author who paints Fanny Conway is pretty sure to fail when the task is to describe the character of all others least amenable to description, the able English girl, all purity and affection, but who can intrigue when necessary in an honest but subtle way, utter epigrams to male friends, and even when provoked fight hard. The idea is evident throughout, but the authoress has not realized it, and Stephanie rather bores. For the rest, to people not careful of what they read, and not anxious to remember a novel long, who want only to be keenly amused, and hold with Charles Lamb that nobody's acts injure us so long as we recog- nize that they belong to an unreal world, we can safely recom- mend Denis Donne.
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