ALL SORTS AND CONDITIONS OF MEN.*
THE dissolution of the literary partnership recently ter- minated by the death of Mr. James Rice, lends additional interest of a melancholy kind to the remarkable novel which its author, Mr. Besant, describes upon its title-page as "An Impossible Story." Picturing to our mind what hard work it must have been to write this story, planned and carried out alone, in his fresh grief of loss at the close of a companionship of ten years, concerning whose steadfastness and entirety Mr. Besant says a few simple and manly words, we are all the more im- pressed with the ability of the author who has made it so pleasant to read. The charm of originality and freshness that from the first attracted attention to the novels of the collabora- tours is not only present, but at its best, in this single-handed book, which is also a memorial,
"I have been told," says Mr. Besant, in his preface, "by certain friendly advisers, that this story is impossible. I have, therefore, stated the fact On the title-page, so that no one may complain of being taken in or deceived. But I have never been able to understand why it is impossible." The impossibility of the story, from the point of view of the friendly advisers of the author, is easily apprehended ; it is the impossibility that persons like Angela Messenger and Harry Cioslett (we pro- test against the latter name), inspired by such a spirit, and animated by such motives as theirs, should exist in the world as it lies within our knowledge. And it is also the impossibility of success in the great enterprise which Angela Messenger
* Al! Sorts and Conditions of Mon an Impossitlo Story. By Walter Besant. London : Ghetto and Windus. carried through. We, however, agree with Mr. Besant,—we do not think the story is impossible ; that it is improbable must be admitted, but if the will to do good on so enlightened and the power to do good on so extended a scale were combined in one individual, there is no absolute impossibility in Miss Mes- senger's scheme for making the sons and daughters of toil happy, in a civilised, and elevated, yet practical way ; her Palace of Delights need not be the unsubstantial fabric of a vision. It might interfere with the rules and the practices of certain trades and industries, but there is nothing made more clear in this book—which abounds with instruction in the problems of life that lie around us, but which we rarely try to solve—than that those rules and practices demand interference and reform, in the interests of the community. If, instead of accepting Mr. Besant's story as "impossible," one reads it from the author's own point of view, it gains very much in interest, and the flavour of its half-cynical, half-religious humour is brought oat much more effectively than if it be taken merely as a romance of that unknown land, East London.
In this modern romance of philanthropy, fancy, fact, toil., and love, which does not belong to any class of fiction, and has, in common with its predecessors, only the real serious- ness and the unflagging interest that are characteristic of them all, there is imagination of a high order, very much above mere ingeniousness, which might have constructed the plot more neatly. Angela Messenger, the young and beautiful possessor of an immense fortune as the actual proprietor of a celebrated brewery, is a finely-conceived character, and the girl's graces loveliness of person and mind, enthusiasm, good sense, ardent generosity, womanly tenderness, and girlish fun, make up a figure as attractive as it is unconventional. She is like no other young lady in any novel within our knowledge, but she is une like exceptional heroines of fiction in this, that she would be charming in real life,—a delightful "sweetheart," an inestims able daughter, a wife to be coveted by all sorts and conditions of men. With the first sight of her, with her capital description to her fellow-student at Newnham of her cumbrous and .ever- growing wealth, and her determination not "to go on living by the toil of the people, and giving nothing in return," not to be "that dreadful thing, a She-Dives," the reader falls in love with Angela. Here is the young heiress, who has a ready fascination for all novel-writers, in a new aspect indeed :— My late grandfather,' says Angela to Constance—a fifth wrangler, of whom we hear no more—the day before she is to 'go down,' 'intended me to become the perfect Brewer, if a woman can attain to so high an ideal. Therefore, I was educated in the neces- sary and fitting lines. They taught me the industries of England, the arts and manufactures, mathematics, accounts, the great outlets of trade, book-keeping, mechanics,—all those things that are prac- tical. Then, when I grew up, I was sent here by him, because the very air of Cambridge, he thought, makes people exact, and WOM013 are so prone to he inexact. I was to read while I was here all the books about Political and Social Economy. I have also learned, for business purposes, two or three languages. I am now finished. I know all the theories about people, and I don't believe any of thorn will work. Therefore, my dear,. I shall get to know the people, before apply them.' And your project P'—' It is very simple. I efface myself. I vanish. I disappear.'—' What ?'—'if anybody asks where I am, no one will know, except you ; and you will not tell.'—' You will be in—' 'Whitechapel, or thereabouts, Your Angela will be a dressmaker, and she will livo by herself, and be- come what her great-grandmother was, one of the people.'—' You will not like it at Perhaps not, but I am weary of theories, facts, statistics. I want flesh and blood. I want to feel myself a part of this striving, eager, anxious humanity, on whose labours I live in comfort, by whom I have been educated, to whom I owe alb,
and for whom I have done nothing.' But, alone ? Yon will
venture into the dreadful region alone Quite alone, Constanoc.; And—and your reputation, Angela ?'—'As for my reputation, it may take care of itself. Those of my friends who think I am not to be trusted may transfer their affection to more trustworthy objects.' So Angela Messenger turns into Miss Kennedy, a dress- maker in Stepney, who has some interest with the great heiress;' and the story begins at a boarding-house, which for characterize, tion may compare with Balzac's. In real life, a personage of such wealth and importance could not hide herself even in the wilds of Stepney, justly assumed by Mr. Besanttdo gravely treatedunknown to West Londoners as Borrioboola-Gha, an
treated by him in an exploratory spirit truly comic ; there would be too many people interested in knowing all about her, and the West-end household could not be deserted with success and impunity. Readers who could be staggered by objections of this kind or diverted from the enjoyment of the humour, the romance, and the realism of the quaintest conceit in modern fiction, would not, however, deserve that such a book should be written for their pleasure. The lucky young gentleman, in the din-
, guise of a cabinet-maker, who woes the dressmaker and weds the lie' 'frees, is made very fairly interesting ; but he cannot compete with Angela as "a happy thought," nor is lie accounted for with se .0 successful an appearance of vraisemb lance. Lord Jocelyn , le Breton, who has brought up Harry Goslett, the son of a serjeae t inhis own regiment, in the belief that he is a relative, and. e'rho tells him the truth when he is twenty-three
• 're old, and
top of social
hives him the choice of remaining in his place,
"near i...e, Celle pyramid," where, as he believes, "the greatest IPP'ess –lies," or going among his own people, "to • prove," as HillY..,87%-c," the brotherhood of humanity," though admirably drawn, a 1..e– fellow and a perfect gentleman, is, it seems to us, the one impossible personage of the story. He is, however, not the less interesting, and, from our point of view of the romancer's right, just as permissible. There are two char- acters which, without being in the least imitative, remind us of Dickens. One is Bunker, Harry Goslett's cruel uncle and fraudulent trustee, the tyrant of the small householders on the great Messenger estate at Stepney, who endeavours to under- mine Miss Kennedy with her wealthy patroness, and is an accomplished and, even in the end and under detection, a suc- oessful rogue. The humour of the old villain's tricks and talk, and the delightful equivoque of the situation, are very like Dickens, and would be telling on the stage. The other is Josephus, the disgraced, but tolerated "senior-junior clerk" at the brewery, a kind of "Mr. Carker junior," who is rehabi- litated in the end, and prepares to begin his life all over again, as though he were once more a boy, and all the intervening years were blotted out of hie tale of existence.
Side by side with the romance of the story, to which Mr.
Besa.nt gives himself up unreservedly at the cud, making a brilliant and touching fairy-tale of the marriage, the discovery by Harry Goslett of his bride's real name and position, and the " inauguration " of the " Palace of Delights," is serious, care- fully-studied realism. The incidents are numerous, but not extravagant ; the humour is never farcical, all the talk is natural, pleasant, attractive; and if the pictures of working-men and working-life are sombre and puzzling, the good angel's plans and poser are at hand to suggest a bright side. The author tells us that the scenes and the characters are the results of his wanderings in Stepney, Whitechapel, St. George's-in-the-East, Limehouse, Bow, Stratford, "and all that great and marvellous unknowu country which we call East London ;" and how, in one of these wanderings, he "had the happiness to discover Rotherhithe ;" in a second, to light upon `.` a certain haven of rest for aged Sea Captains," and in others to "find many wonderful things, and converse with many wonderful people." For the admirable use to which Mr. Besant has put his studies among "all sorts and conditions of men," for his revelations of life among the dressmakers, the joiners, the artisans of all kinds in East London ; for a straightforward statement of the absence of religion among the workmen, of their deliberate abandonment of all beliefs; and especially for a very striking sketch of a member of the Salvation Army—this is, in some respects, the masterpiece of the book—we must refer the reader to its pages. It is generally injurious to a novel to say that it is something beside; people who road merely for amusement are suspicious of imperfectly-disguised instruction ; people who read for in- formation do not go to the novels of a period for that com- modity. May we venture, with Mr. Guppy's proviso, "without prejudice," to hint that while the idlest reader may safely be challenged to point out a dull page in the book, a flaw in its fancy, a flag in its interest, it is one which gives the observer and the thinker a good deal to "turn over."
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