MONSIEUR LOVE.* THIS is, of course, the old, old story,
but it is a charming varia- tion on the inexhaustible theme of the eternal " he " and "she." Evidently the work of a young author, probably her first, in this novel there is more than promise, there is real, present merit, and in its girlish freshness; its genuine sentiment, its pleasant enthusiasm, and ready sympathy, a refreshing con- trast to the hateful tone that has of late pervaded the novels for which we are indebted to young ladies. The very timidity which the author betrays over and over again is pretty and graceful, like the first steps of a child on the rim of summer sea-foam ; and if her story be somewhat wanting in knowledge of the world, it is perfectly free from the cynicism and self-assertion characteristic of that school among her contemporaries, whose motives and style Miss Coxon has successfully avoided. Imagine, in this day of distorted rela- tionships and emancipated ideas, a heroine of fiction, beautiful and good, who actually loves, respects, and obeys her grand- mother, believing it possible that the old lady may be both wise and disinterested, and is not loftily revolted at the uniosthetic aspect of age and of infirmity ! And this hero- ine, capable of such out-of-date sentiments, is a charming girl, full of talent and eagerness, endowed with a quiet loftiness of mind befitting an English lady, and of high courage, taking the buffets of life without any raving, but knowing how to love nobly and with self-devotion. And yet she is not a heroine of the grand order ; she is of , the bright, pleasant, girlish kind, and there is not a dull page or a bit of tall-talking in the book. The story opens with a sketch of the home of Victoire Treherue, Polwhyn Manor, in Cornwall. This is prettily drawn, evidently from the life; and when the reader follows Victoire to the wood, seldom resorted to by anybody except herself, and which slopes down to a trout stream in which no one has any right to fish, he makes a not very hazardous guess that the opportune angler is not far off whose sport shall that day mean serious things to Victoire Treherne. He and she, the angler and the lady, are intro- duced to each other in a very pretty and original scene ; although the meeting Jacks the boldness of the hero- ine who invaded an hotel, and acted as an amateur attendant, in order to get a good look at handsome men whom she had seen in the street ; or tile charming in- genuousness of that other nice girl who sang" Cherry Ripe" in the Morgue, and made her future husband's acquaintance by bumping against him while running a race with a school-fellow. Here is the sketch of Victoire in the wood, as Paul Lyndon, fishing unpermitted in Mrs. Treherne's trout stream, sees her first :—
" Reaching a small and level piece of turf, she threw down her book, tossed her hat aside, and paced up and down, studying in her mind what she had read; then she began to repeat a scone of the play, slowly at first, considering each sentence, pondering how to give every word its just weight and expression, repeating each speech till she was, to some extent, satisfied with her delivery of it ; in short, studying a • part, and studying it with a rare, though un- taught artistic sense of its moaning, with an earnest delight in its beauty, which ,,vere the natural outcome of the dramatic instinct that was strong within her, though never encouraged or even guessed at, so strong that this stolen exercise of it was the greatest pleasure of her life. She had studied enough for to-day ; she took two steps forward and stood, no longer Victoire Troherne, but Duchess of ICOR. She acted most of the
parts in a low voice, playing that of chief scenes, speaking the other
the Duchess with an untutored passion and pathos which showed capabilities for great things. Her slight form, drawn up to its full height, seemed to grow into majesty, her voice clearer and sweeter, her cheeks flushed, her eyes sparkled and shone ; the girl was trans- formed. Her acting was untaught and imperfect, it could not be otherwise, but she felt the power of the part as few women could ; she would have made an audience feel it, too, 'I am Duchess of Maid still The goaded woman's pride and agony burst from her lips with such fierce passion as fairly to startle a listener who was watching her from behind a clump of trees."
The hidden angler—he is a little too superbly handsome, but that is very pardonable in a jeune premier in every sense—is also an actor, and the grandson of an old friend of Mrs. Tre- herne's. Paul Lyndon and Victoire have a very pretty little discovery-scene of their own, and the reader speedily finds him- self in the presence of "Monsieur Love." The course of the story is not, however, in the least what the well-trained novel- reader imagines it is going to be. The weakness of Lyndon's character is cleverly indicated, in the first impulse which leads • Monsieur Love. By Ethel Colon. London 1 Bentley and Son. him to conceal the fact that he is an actor from the proud and aristocratic old lady who, simply and unsuspectingly, wel- comes him when he is brought to Polwhyn ac.cidontally by her son, the 'uncle of Victoire, on the score of his birth and breeding ; and the fatal selfishness and cowardice of it are made plain when he conceals a more important fact still from Victoire, winning her heart, while he cannot ask her hand. We must not tell the story, which is off beaten tracks, interesting, and singular, as the work of a young writer, in that it is never exaggerated, and that in it no one is either inhuman or superhuman, Miss Coxon draws upon her imagination in the portion of her story that deals with the behind-the-scenes of the lives of actors and actresses, and with things theatrical in general ; she is at home with the other por- tions of it. We like very much indeed her kindly, sympathetic, pretty sketch of "Nellie," the good, foolish little actress, and especially we like the simple, sinless explanation of her quarrel with her husband, and the touching mixture of pettish- ness and humility in the poor, ill-appreciated wife, whose innate vulgarity is skilfully indicated. In all this, however, the writer's good-faith is greater than her knowledge of the world of which she writes, and her pictures are idealised.
We should like to say more than we can say, without telling the story, of the cleverness and originality of the manner in which Miss Coxon concludes this simple history. The common-place, the trite, and yet the sensational, so plainly offered themselves to her, and have been rejected with such good- taste, that we do not think even the most careless reader can fail to discern real artistic power in the conclusion of the novel. The book is far from faultless ; for instance, there is a good deal of dubious grammar in it. The speakers are in the habit of terminating their sentences with the preposition "to," and the author flagrantly misuses the verbs "to lie" and "to lay ;" but these and other faults are of a kind which practice and care will cure,—they are not radical, and they are insignificant, in comparison with the qualities for which we have praised this first novel.
TOURIST'S GUIDE TO THE COUNTY OP SURREY.* Tins is one of the most recent and most interesting additions to Mr. Stanford's admirable series of cheap and portable guides to the English counties. What Mr. Murray has done on a large and exhaustive scale, and in a way to satisfy the most curious and studious traveller, Mr. Stanford is endeavouring to do for the hasty tourist, whose chief desire is to know what places to see, and how and at what cost he can see them. Mr. Bevan performs his task in a complete and business-like style. He wastes no words, gives the tourist all or nearly all the instruction he can possibly need, and provides for him an ample variety of routes. A pedestrian with this little book in his pocket can scarcely make a mistake in his choice of excur- sions, and if he consult with sufficient care the two admirable maps, he is not likely to go astray, As far as we have been able to test the directions of the Guide, we have found them extremely accurate ; but the first issue of a book of this kind is never free from errors—it is impossible that it should be—aud we note a few mistakes or deficiencies which it may be as well to correct in the next edition. We bear for the first time that Jeremiah Markland translated Euripides, and we may remind Mr. Bevan that he has mistaken the period of Pope's removal to Twickenham by three years. It was in 1718, not 1715, that the poet left Chiswick, with his mother, and settled for the remainder of his life on the spot he has made so famous. Literature is, perhaps, a little out of the guide-book writer's province, but Mr. Bevan is certainly mistaken when he calls Camilla one of Miss Burney's most successful works ;. and if the lovely neigh- bourhood of Albury owes its immortality to Mr. Martin Tupper's Stephen, Langton, it is to be feared it will live a very obscure life indeed. Passing from Albury to Streat- ham, we may observe that the mansion in Streatham Park inhabited for so many years by the Thrales and their famous guest, Dr. Johnson, did not stand "in the corner of the common nearest Tooting," nor is its place "now occupied by a boarding-house." There is no tablet in memory of Sir Arthur Helps in Streatham Church, but his family vault is in the churchyard. Where, by the way, did Mr. Bevan learn that the ancient name of Dorking is Cotmandene 1' He may be right,
* Thistles Guide to the County 01.9urrey. Containing full Information concerning all its Favourite Places of Resort. By G. Phillips 13evan,F.G.S.,F.S.S. With Maps. London ; Stanford. 1879. but it is not the name given in Domesday Book, and it is the name attached to a pleasant common, the cricket-ground of the town, and a spot at one time. in high, repute for its salubrity. These are all trifling, matters, which we mention only because the book is good, and likely to be in such constant use that. nothing can be unimportant that affects AO accuracy. The only blunder of . any significance that we have discovered, and it is a curious one, oeours on p. 19, where we read that "Prince Leopold,' the husband. of the Princess Charlotte, is buried in the mausoleum in the grounds of Claremont !
Surrey is a very small county, but in many respects it is as interesting as any county in England. Nowhere, else out- side the metropolis will you find in so narrow a corn. pass so much that is worthy of. attention. The ground is sacred to great names and to great deeds, and the scenery, although destitute of lakes and mountains, is beautiful enough to inspire the fancy and to satisfy the heart. The wealth of Surrey asso, ciations is known, it is to be feared, to few even of its residents; and many a man who has lived all, his life in the county is probably more familiar with the "lions" of Switzerland orItaly, than with "the memorials and the things of. fame" that lie almost at his feet. The. scenery of Surrey is as Mr.. Bevan points out, of the true English type. Fields rich in colour during spring-time, woods and bosky dells and over arched lanes, pleasant country homesteads,, lordly mansions and spacious parks, extensive commons, and village greens devoted every summer evening, and often through the long hours of a summer day, to the national game of cricket; those are some of. the features of the county which will attract the tourist's attention. Many a sweet spot will make him linger, as he wanders through this homeliest and most motherly of counties, which may have been in Mrs. Browning's thoughts when she wrote of,— " The happy violets hiding, from the roads, The primroses ran down to, carrying gold,— The tangled hedge-rows, where the cows push out Impatient horns, and tolerant churning mouths,
'Twist dripping ash-boughs. . . .
. . ..... . . . Hills, vales, woods, netted in a silver mist ; Farms, granges, doubled up among the hills, And cattle grazing in the watered vales, And cottage-ohimneya smoking from the woods, And cottage-gardens smelling everywhere.!'
But the scenery of Surrey has features of a less domestic char- aeter. Within a few miles of London, in the neighbourhood of Esher, for example, and more noticeably in the country round Leith Hill £1,71C1 Holnibury, there are wild tracts of moorland, covered with furze and heather, over' which the pedestrian may wander in solitude ; and it is remarkable, consider- ing the positioft of the county, how freely even its most cultivated portions can be traversed on horseback or on foot. In. the neighbourhood crf Dorking, for example, there is free access to Detchworth Park, both on its upper and lower ground; the adjacent woods are accessible, in many places the accommodation of seats is .provided, and almost every lovely nook in this loveliest of spots can be explored at will. At Norbury—known to all readers of Fanny. Burney—there is a. public way through the grounds, and also, if we remember rightly, access to the Druids' Grove, famous for its yew trees, '" which were in their manhood when William the Conqueror was a boy." At Denbies, again, which, like Norbury, stands on a lovely site, a public footpath leads almost in front of the house to Ramnore Common, and dropping down from that high ground into the road leading from Dorking to Wotton and Abinger, the traveller, having first explored Bury Hill, with its beautiful eminence called the Nower, can turn into the gates of the Rookery, the birthplaoe of Population Malthus, pass in front of the house and through the woods to the valley of Broadmoor, and. thence by devious windings, to Leith Hill. Mr. Bevan observes, by the way, that there is no admission to Wotton House, the residence two centuries ago of " Sylva," Evelyn,' but he might have added that here also there is a bridle-path through the grounds.
Leith Hill and Box Hill are among the sights of Surrey, which boasts also the famous views from Richmond Hill, and from other heights, which, like Cooper's Hill and St. Anne's Hill are distin- guished for beauty of prospect as well as for the associations to which they are linked. The view from Cooper's Hill, "the Mount rnassus of Sir John Denham," is, in Mr. Thorne's judgment, one of the loveliest in the neighbourhood of London; and St. Anne's Hill, beloved of Cowley and of ,Vox, deserves an equal re- putation. The illustrious.men who, by living or dying in -Surrey, may be said to have done honour to,the county, cannotreaclily be numbered. Sir Walter Raleigh was once a.resident at Mitcham, Pitt died on Putney Heath ; at Putney, Gibbon, was born and Douglas Jerrold died ; there, too, fOr some years, Jived Henry Fielding, and there Handel found a temporany home ; , Chertsey in sacred to Cowley ; Richmond to Thomson and Earl Russell ; Streatham to Dr. Johnson ; Betchworth to Abraham Tucker, Wotton to Evelyn; Moor Park to Sir William Temple, to Swift and Stella ; and who can dbubt that in years to come—far off may the time be !—pilgrims will visit with reverent curiosity the summer home of Mr. Tennyson, at Haslemere P
Mr. Bevan's little volume suggests other thoughts, for the theme is one expansive.enough for a Quartorty7Beview article, and the space at our disposal is limited. We should like to say something of the trees for which Surrey is remarkable—Leigh Hunt called it the great garden of walnuts, but it is quite as famous for its oaks and beeches, its cedars, chestnuts, and yews— something of the famous sites watered by the Thames., something of the Mole, berhyrned by six poets; something more than has been said. already of the men of letters whose names are perman- , ently associated with the county. The pleasure of travel , is 'enormously increased by the knowledge we carry. with us on our way, but mind from the knowledge and the delight to be gained from association, the tourist in surrey, especially if he traverse the county on foot, will be amply repaid by the beautyof hill and down, of wood. and moorland, of park and homestead. Ire should take care, however, to plan his course beforehand, and Mr. BOVEIll'S Guide will instruct him how to do this to the best advantage. If the sun will but shine upon his ramble, we can assure him that he will find it profitable and pleasant.
Previous page
