THE DUKE'S HONOUR.*
Ma. WILBERFORCE has writtten an original and amusing book, —far the best thing in the outward form of a novel which
he has yet given us, — though a very bad novel. It is original in having no love story, no plot which practically in- volves the hero and heroine at all, if indeed hero and heroine there can be said to be, in never exciting the slightest sentiment of interest concerning that hero and heroine, and yet contriving nevertheless to be in the main a very lively and amusing story about persons for whom personally the reader never cares, or can fancy that he cares, a straw. Mr. Wilberforce has apparently made up his mind that the mere fact of having to occupy himself with a young gentleman and young lady who are to be eventually united in marriage is fatal to any feeling of interest on his part as an author, and yet that the conventional decencies of this kind of literature compel him to convey what we may call, by a legal metaphor, the legal estate in his plot to such personages ; this has not, however, prevented him from diverting the interest by an ap- plication, if we may keep up the metaphor, of the doctrine of uses, to personages in whose manosuvrq,s he can feel some interest, and to the delineation of whose characters he can give some real vivacity. Assuredly the interest lingers with the former hardly so long as the momentary spark of legal right, the scintilla juris, takes in flashing between the first and second link in the chain of uses. The whole ability of the story is lavished on the secondary personages in it, and even as regards them the interest is not one of either sympathy or antipathy, but rather of amused curiosity. Mr. Wilberforce would have done still better if be had curtailed the English portion of his book still further. We do not wish him to have omitted the very amusing and able sketches of the Bishop of Rotherfield's interviews with Mr. Charles Roby. They have a charm of their own, in spite of the fact that they appear to concern the for- tunes of the hero. But why inflict upon us the details of that intolerable fancy bazaar? It is forbidden by the true plan of the book, which carefully refrains from any pretence of direct interest in the doings of the hero and the heroine,—this being the only scene of the slightest moment in which both hero and heroine appear. The account of it is almost as dull as the fancy bazaar itself would have been, and the description occupies almost as much time. It is quite redundant. It must have fatigued the author. It utterly exhausts the reader. In the next edition of his book Mr. Wilberforce should at least insert a foot-note,—such as we recently saw in the work of a humane author,—warning the impatient reader that he may if he pleases, unless specially interested in fancy bazaars, skip the literary Sahara which intervenes between the commencement of this dreary episode and Mr. Charles Roby's return to the German gambling spa.
The title of the story suggests some common-place novel of English aristocratic life, but fortunately this is a suggestio falsi. The Duke whose honour is at stake throughout the storyis the Grand Duke of a fictitious little German duchy,—Waldenheim,--and his private honour is guarded against a serious stain at the cost of conceding to an adventurer the right to tarnish in some degree that of his Government by setting up a gambling-house in the picturesque little spa of Kesselbad. The whole merit of the story consists in the lively description of this intrigue and its progress, though the reader never feels, or apprehends for a moment that he could feel, the smallest personal regard for any of the personages whom it concerns. The Grand Duke himself, with his stiff, dignified, indifferent ways, half-concealing the gleam of an ability too languid to assert itself beneath his dreary routine manner, and his fussy prime minister, Baron Bott, whom the Duke in his heart despises Baron Bott being only just clever enough to be half aware that his master despises him, are both of them lively sketches.
• The Duke's Honour. By Edward Wilberforce, Author of "Social Life n Munich." 3 vole. London: Hurst and Blacken.
Again, the Anglo-French-German adventurer Garvil is certainly not less lively, though he strikes us as a little less real. He
is an adventurer rather than a man. One's interest is in his stratagems, not in him. Thus the conversation in which Garvil manages to make Baron Bott shrink from being present during his own interview with the Grand Duke, though Garvil himself appears to ask for his presence, having, all the while, the most urgent reasons of his own for desiring a strictly private interview, is very cleverly managed ; but Mr. Wilberforce runs into very broad farce indeed when he describes Garvil's apology to Baron Bott for setting up the gambling-house at Kesselbad,—an arrangement which he had hitherto carefully concealed from the Grand Duke's minister. Such a scene as the following is more like burlesque than a novel of real life :- "' It is not always easy,' pursued Garvil, to embark in a scheme with full consciousness of one's own resources, and of the amount required to carry one through not only in safety, but with some credit. When I spoke first to your Excellency, I was certainly of opinion that my spare thou- sands would have enabled me to do this work. But I had forgotten, and I trust your Excellency does not know, the difficulties put in the way of business by the English law. That code is so severe, that it positively does not recognize the validity of contracts made without valuable con- sideration, and I found that I could not invest my money in this bath without being able to show that it would bring me in some profit.'—The Baron looked suspiciously at Garvil. This seems a very strange law ; is it in the civil or the criminal code ? Ah ! I see your Excellency does not know the strange state of the law of England. There is no code of any kind, nothing but a confused mass of precedents, interpreted by lawyers according to the opinions of the day.'—' There are Acts of Par- liament,' urged the Baron.—'Yes, there are Acts of Parliament ; but what is their value ? It is the boast of England that it governs itself, and Acts of Parliament are merely the temporary expedients by which the present shifts off the disagreeable duty of knowing its own position to a future that will follow its example. Ah ! Baron, if you had wit- nessed the interview between me and a firm of lawyers when I announced my intention of devoting my spare money to the improvement of this place ! I announced it to the junior partner, a boy in years, a child in experience. He looked at me. Never had I witnessed anything like the precocious terror of that look. Never shall I make a similar remark across an attorney's table. He rose and loft me, then he returned with the next partner, and ho too looked at me. So in turn. Each of the six partners came in, gazed at me, and retired. Last of all came the old, grey-haired senior partner, whose first act in life was being the witness at my grandfather's confirmation. He, too, looked at me, but ho spoke. He said, "Young man, has the law no sanctity in your eyes ? " And then all the other partners came back, and the clerks of each partner came, each bearing a load of books with which they surrounded me, and in the middle of which I stood as in a circle of incantations. And the senior partner took the book of Chitty, and the junior partner the book of Addison—'—' Of course, the Spectator,' said Bott, brighteging up sud- denly, for this was the first word he understood of the intolerable rigma- role.—'True; responded Garvil, who had crammed up something about the law of contracts, but was not equally versed in general literature. ' And in all books they found the same, that no contracts are recognized by the law of England unless they are made for valuable considerations. It was my death-warrant. How was I to keep my pledge to your Excel- lency? How was I to do my duty towards Dr. Krause? Could you suggest anything? '—'No,' replied Baron Bott sadly.—' Nor could I. I had yielded to the entreaties of my lawyers. They had become cheer- ful and sent away their books. Free from that incubus of a hundred volumes, I breathed again. I poured out my story to the senior partner. I implored him, by all that was sacred, by my grandfather's confirma- tion, by my father's marriage settlement, by my own baptismal register, to help me. And at last ho consented, and it is on his advice I am now acting. " The law," he said, "is clear, there must be a valuable considera- tion. Shall I got you the books again to show yon ?"—" Not for worlds!" was my reply. I will admit anything to keep those books out of my sight. I will even admit that the law is clear."—" Well, then," he said, " make a valuable consideration. Have a card-table."—' A card-table !' shrieked Baron Bott. Do you mean to make the bath a gambling- house ? The law forbids it. It can't be done!' "
This is certainly quite out of drawing with the rest of the novel. It is amusing, as is the whole of this gambling-house intrigue ; but it is amusing in the way of broad farce, while the rest is amusing rather in the way of light comedy.
Miss Villars and her Aunt, too, are cleverly drawn enough as in- triguantes, though here, again, there is much less attempt at the painting of character than at the conception of intriguing parts which sit so lightly on the persons who act them that one scarcely takes the trouble to resent the evil qualities of the natures portrayed. This is the main characteristic of the whole novel,—that the characters are hardly characters, but only puppets playing a game for our amusement, which is the more entertaining because it is a false game. With great novelists the false parts are so completely expressive of character that the reader is impatient to see the actors punished ; with small novelists, the false parts are so little expres- sive of character that we decline to feel the indignation expected of us ; but this story lies between the two ; it does not make us more angry with the falsehood of the intriguers it portrays than a Punch- and-Judy show does with the cruelty of Punch ; on the other hand, it does not demand, or pretend to demand, the slightest conventional indignation of ns j it is simply a rather lively puppet-show ; we
listen to the talk of the puppets because their remarks amuse us, and not from the slightest interest in the denouement, or the slightest desire either to convert the puppets from the sin and error of their ways, or to see them suffer on account of that sin and error. Nothing can be better in its way than Miss Villars' interview with the old Count Perkenstein when he explains to her that he cannot let his son marry her unless she has money, and Miss Villars find- ing that Count Louis Perkensteiu on his side will have no money, abandons the engagement, but not without a bitter revenge on his father. Still such a parting speech as hers, amusing as it is, carries with it very little impression of a living character. It is lively talk, which we like while we listen to it, and forget the moment it has ceased.
One very entertaining element of the book is its sketch of the rustic rising in the neighbourhood of Kesselbad, when it is dis- covered that the German boys engaged from the neighbouring village to act the part of waiters have (apparently) lost their Ger- man tongue with their German clothes, and will not even recognize their own kindred when addressed by them in their own language. We must give a portion of this very entertaining episode :—
" Around these tables stood neat young waiters, in the perfection of black clothing and white ties, easy in posture, graceful in gesture, fluent in speech. One of them was balancing himself in a degage manner on one foot, swinging the other carelessly about. His snowy napkin lay in light folds on his left arm, while the finger of his right hand played with the fringe. Yet he only waited for the cry of GmTon 1 or the rap on the marble, to glide swiftly up to the summoning table, and to bring the required coffee or lemonade. To him came an old peasant woman, carrying a basket of eggs, the produce of her small stock of poultry. Everything about her bore marks of extreme rusticity. The variegated Indian hues of her upper garment, the bright scarlet of her skirt, the handkerchief round her head, the thick man's boots on her feet, con- trasted strangely with the subdued neatness of the waiter's figure. No doubt she felt the contrast, for she looked up in awe at tho spotless white of shirt-front and cravat. Such stiffness she had never seen. Such fine cloth as composed the black clothes had never come into the mountains of Waldenheitn. Such light material as furnished the shoes could not have any affinity with leather. This was indeed an importa- tion from that godless country of France against which the pastor had so often warned them, and which was always on the watch for an opportunity of provoking a quarrel with Germany, in order that it might annex the Grand Duchy. Had the being a face like that of a German? The old woman looked up timidly, and the face seemed familiar to her. She must have seen it before, though she could scarcely tell where. Then it flashed across her mind that it was the face of her son.—' What then?' she gasped out, almost incredulous still. 'In God's name ! Yes, what is it then ? You ! Is it you? Oh, thou Almighty, that I ever such a sight experience must Eli Lien! Qu'as-tu, ma bonne femme?' asked the waiter negligently.—' No, but no, such a gibberish ! Ach, thou just Heaven ! Are you not then my Maxi ?'—The waiter shrugged his shoulders. Compread pas. Tener done, comment is dit-on en Allemand1 1k ve,.steh nik, Lein Teitsch ' So. He is then truly a stranger. Beg for pardon, if I disturbed have Now go I. But yet,' as she looked again in the waiter's face, it is still true. You are my Maxi!'—The waiter summoned one of his colleagues to his aid. The now-comer professed to know a few words of German. But as soon as he spoke, and assured the old woman that she must have made a mistake, she recognized him as the groove-cutter's Stipp from the other end of her village. Of course this only made her delu- sion more flagrant. She persisted in it. Another waiter was called. Why, lie was the son of her next-door neighbour. And yet scarcely one of them understood German. The language they talked was a compound of unknown words ; their very gestures wore strange and heathenish. They stuck so firmly to their original position, that at length the old woman walked away, muttering and meditating to the discredit of the new bath. Her rage found words when she got home. In a solemn conclave of the whole village she denounced Kesselbad. Standing on her door-step like one inspired, she poured forth a torrent of words which no one living beyond tho immediate neighbourhood could have under-
stood. Her hearers were more fortunate. No,' she exclaimed, wildly, such a thing has never been heard of, has been quite unheard of. Think of a place where all the people go about in linen garments, and the men too, not one of them in good cloth, or in mantles! And the things they do, thou Almighty ! Music on a week-day, and not even a feast ! And not one who dances thereto. No, not even one I' Here tho audience wagged their heads gravely, and there were a few ejaculations
of Yes, yes, so is it And the people sitting round tables and drink- ing, and not one of them with a glass of beer! And, yes, what think you then, if it is not beyond all, they have taken our boys and robbed them of all their good clothes which we made for them, and dressed them like scarecrows, and cut out their true German tongues and, planted in their mouths tongues which cannot speak but a faint gib- berish, and conjured them not to know their own kin any longer, and made them dolls, puppets, and what more fails me the reason. The groove-cutter's Sepp was thero and didn't know me. Ay, and my Maxi was there, and couldn't speak to mo ; and your boy, neighbour saw- miller ; and your boy, neighbour blue-millor ; and your boy, neighbour of the new house ; and they all know no word of German more than a new-born one.' "
Undoubtedly, the plot, on the whole, even granting that it is to- have nothing to do with the hero and heroine, is very defective. Police Superintendent Blum's wanderings on the false scent on which he is started by Garvil, and Mr. Vezinet's investigations are really almost as foreign to the story as the fancy bazaar, though not so dull. Then nothing can be more monstrously im-
probable than Mr. Charles Roby's luck in breaking the bank,— not of course that such events do not sometimes happen, but that it is a vast addition of improbability that it should happen in the sole case in which the player is playing for an unselfish motive, and has made up his mind beforehand that he will gain a certain sum at play and spend it on the rebuilding of his church. Of course, however, this incident is not meant to be probable,— simply grotesque, and grotesque it certainly is, adding very much to the general unevenness of the book, of which one can hardly help saying, Barbarous art, but (barring the cruel fancy bazaar) very entertaining reading.' We wish we had room for one specimen of the Bishop of Rotherfield. We are afraid we must say that his lordship is strictly speaking the only real character in the book. Is it because he alone was drawn from life?
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