THE PEASANT AND III8 LANDLORD.
Tata subject of The Peasant and his Landlord seems an odd one for a lady to select for original treatment, and the book still stranger for an Englishwoman to choose for translation, unless upon the principle of no- velty and contrast. In this country the illicit loves of rustics are usually left to statists and commissioners ; or, when the novelist selects a couple who "love not wisely but too well," the fair is generally represented as the victim. In Sweden this view is reversed, at least by the Baroness Knorring. The object of The Peasant and his Landlord is to point the moral of "brandy," by exhibiting the domestic discomfort and per- sonal miseries it entails upon Gunnar, the hero of the story, until it is finally the cause of conducting him to the scaffold. At the opening, the reader finds Gunnar had so far forgotten himself on the occasion of a drinking-bout, as to be the means of placing Lena, a fellow servant at the squire's, and some ten years older than himself, in a condition which cannot eventually be concealed. He is presented to the reader sitting whimpering by the fire at Grantorp, and unable to eat his supper, when Bengt, another fellow servant and the friend of his boy- hood, enters : they take a walk in the open air, and then the mystery comes out.
"'Now look you' groans Gunnar, she comes weeping and wailing, and say- ing that I have made a miserable woman of her, and that it is all through me, and Heaven knows what; that she shall lose her good name, and that it is all my fault; and that I ought to marry her, and that the Squire and Ma'msell Sara said that they would compel me to it; and many other such stupid things she said.' "'Stuff and nonsense!' said Bengt with disgust; 'stuff and nonsense! that's not s thing to vex yourself about. There is not one amongst us but knows well
enough how that limb of Satan has ran after you, and anybody with any sense can understand why. She is certainly full four or five-and-thirty years old, the vulgar wretch ! and you are hardly three-and-twenty. Don't think about it. No, that will never come to pass: no, you most point-blank deny it, and let it take its own course.'
"'Yea, yes; but it's the truth for all that,' said Gunnar, slowly and gloomily; and Tea not right to deny the truth, either before God or man.' "'Why, yes, it may be the truth,' said Bengt, who was not quite so conscien- tious as Gunnar; but, you see, she cannot bring forward any witnesses; and it will be altogether for the best that you deny it through thick and thin. Look you, if the child lives, then you can do something for it. Nothing in all this world should ever make me have Lena, if I were you. Good gracious! it would be standing like a dog to be fastened up in a kennel. No, let come what would, I never would have Lena.'"
In pursuance of this advice, Gunnar, who, the preface informs us, re- presents the old "knight-like quality," stoutly denies his liability before the squire of Grantorp, but is melted into confession when kindly dealt with by his amiable sister and the parson of the parish. After a suffi- cient interval to allow of scenes and descriptions in order to exhibit the characters of some of the dramatis persona; and the customs of the Swedish peasantry, the marriage takes place ; the squire granting the couple a farm. In due time, however, or rather "before the time," the appearance of the baby removes the real paternity from Gunnar, to place it upon the squire : and this incident, with its consequent troubles, ter- minates what may be called act the first. The second section of this odd book brings Elin, the sister of Lena, upon the scene, as a resident in the farm-house, on the death of her mother. Its main subject is a passion which takes place between her and the old knight-quality representative Gunnar, conducted somewhat after the fashion of a coarser " Sorrows of Werter" ; at least there are the free and unsophisticated doings of the peasantry superfined by touches of French sentiment. Any tangible evil, however, is prevented by a tragic occurrence that opens the third division, and occurs in this wise.
The deceit that the squire practised upon Gunnar has never ceased to rankle in the peasant's mind; which is natural enough. A roguish ci-devant fellow servant has robbed his master, but intimates that Gunnar is the thief; which the proprietor of Grantorp believing, has talked about : the squire has also been paying attention to Elin. In these circumstances, and excited by brandy, Gunnar encounters his quondam master in a wood ; a quarrel ensues ; and Gunnar, intending only to thrash him soundly, kills the squire outright by a blow with his gun. Circumstances cause Gun- nar's enemy, 011e, to be accused of the murder and condemned. The Swedish law, in some sense like the German, requires confession unless the crime be directly proved ; which after some six months is done suffi- ciently by witnesses who accidently saw 011e near the spot. He is then ordered for execution ; but Gunnar gives himself up to justice; and the book ends with his death and that of several others.
The Baroness Knorring appears to possess the first qualification of a novelist, a knowledge of the people to be delineated. She has also a truthful though literal power of depiction ; which Mrs. Howitt seems to think equals Fredrika Bremer : but that is a mistake. The Baroness Knorring is neither so clear in her outline, so rich and various in her colouring, nor so free in handling. Her choice of subjects is less judicious as a matter of taste, and still more so in point of ethics. The moral delicacy of both writers may, indeed, be much upon a par ; but in Fredrika Bremer's fictions the taint was incidental, not pervading; whereas in The Peasant and his Landlord the whole material is coarse as well as im- moral. Moreover, the first and second sections are tedious, if not dull. Some novelty attends the delineation of peasant life in West Gothland ; and there is a species of ludicrous effect, from the singular nature of the distress as treated by the Baroness. This last, however, changes its character with the birth of little Gustaf: but the sympathy which might then be extended to Gunnar is marred by the sentimental sinnings of himself and his sister-in-law. The attraction of the peasant life ex- hibition is impaired by the medium in which it is conveyed, and by the preponderance of fiction which ought to be the attractive. The third act of the novel—the murder and its consequences—is both deeper and less offensive : but the interest is injured by the conduct of Gunnar, who seems determined to let 011e suffer so long as his punishment appears justified by his robberies, and only comes forward, after six mouths' cogi- tation, when he finds life at stake. The mode in which the denouement is brought about is ineffective, as evidently contrived to introduce peasant character and manners, at a time when the movement of the story should be too impetuous to permit of such delay. Nevertheless, there is both truth and art in The Peasant and his Landlord; though neither of them agreeable to British tastes. The truth is coarse, and unfitted for the purposes of fiction, at least in the way in which it is presented ; and the art is too obvious and artificial.
To scenes of action the Baroness Knorring is scarcely equal; and even the murder is flat. She succeeds better in the description of emotion. The following extract exhibits Gunnar and bis family after he has heard from his farm-man, Abraham, a confused account of the accusation of 011e and the discovery of the murdered body.
"' Certainty, certainty I must have!' exclaimed Gunnar to himself, with a terrible and demoniac impulse to rush on towards it; and he hurried away, through wood and night, as if he had been chased, and stood in an incredibly short time at the door of the servants' room at Grantorp. No one there had re- tired to rest; and no one was astonished at the appearance of Gunnar on such an occasion, as in every one curiosity and thirst of information, sorrow, and terror, were excited to their utmost degree. He quickly met with Bengt; and Bengt did not once observe how pale the inquirer was but gave Gunnar direct and clear intelligence of all that Abraham had gone round in so confused a manner. "' But how is it known with certainty that it was 011e who—who—who was his actual murderer?' asked Gunnar.
" 'Oh, good Heavens! that is not difficult to know,' answered Bengt. 'He bad received some blows in the morning to compel acknowledgment of the theft, and bad been locked in, but broke out, and he was full of wrath; and God knows how it happened when they met in the wood, for 011e is so malignant, so thorough a rogue, as thou well know'st, that his wickedness makes up for his cowardice; and
I never can believe that he knocked the Squire on the head in open enmesh; but that he came softly after him, and fell on him from behind, so that the equi, did not observe him, for to a certainty the Squire would have dealt with such miscreant as 011e; and it seems the Squire has a wound in the head, as if made by something of iron; and 011e, it seems, had a great window-fastener, or some- thing of the kind, in his hand, as well as the Squire's common red pocket.-book, which he showed when he came to Ringberg's.' "' Who gave him up?' asked Gunnar. " That was Ringberg's wife, as soon as 011e lay down; and this he did directly for he aggravated his drunkenness with a full half measure of brandy, 34 deadened all that remorse which a man cannot avoid having who has murdered fellow creature—eh, Gunnar?' " Gunnar spoke not in reply; but what he thought, that is best known to Loke, and to him, at once the happy and unhappy skald, in whose soul every rapture and every pang develops itself with equal truth. " Gunnar had heard enough. He wandered with steps of hundredweight heaviness homewards, and gave not the least attention to the wild gloom which in the autumn night surrounded and reigned over the old desolate Grantorp, within whose grey walls, rich with the events of the past, the last possessor slept the
eternal sleep in a remote chamber of the tower. • • . " In the room at Vika reigned in the mean time a heavy disquiet, and no one slept well except little Gustaf; for scarcely was Abraham asleep when he started up, and, waving off something with his hands, exclaimed, Nay, nay, for Jesus' sake, cast it not upon me! I will have nothing to do with it. Carry it to the church.' And another time he shrieked out in his sleep, ' Fie! he peeps and stares, although he is a corpse!' " Won't mother go to bed?' said Lena, who paced to and fro in restlessness in the room, and peeped through every window. Mother Ingrid, whom she ad- dressed, sate silent and shrunk together, with her head leaned in her hands, in the very darkest corner of the room, which at this moment was not much darker than the rest, for only a few blackening embers glimmered from time to time fit- fully on the hearth, and entered into rivalry with the miserable moonlight. The storm raged without, and the window-panes rattled in the blast.
" Mother Ingrid went softly and laid herself down, in obedience to Lena's re- commendation; but far was she from sleeping. No, she lay and thought of so much; and amongst other things, on the little bloody rag which was in the room that day at noon, and which the little Gustaf was playing with when she came in. " Hast thou hurt thyself, dear child ? ' the old dame had inquired. No, mother,' the boy had answered; father wiped the gun with the rag.'
" ' Is your father come already from the wood ?' she again asked of little Gus- taf; and he answered, ' Yes'; but, on the contrary, ' No,' when she inquired whe- ther he had brought some birds in his game-bag."
The Baroness Knorring half apologizes, in her preface, for the use of a dialect by the peasants, which, we suppose, may be called provincial, if not coarse. This style Mrs. Howitt seems to have transferred to her translation with considerable skill, by adopting a manner which, if the purpose be not borne in mind, will look lumbering, when it is in reality characteristic.
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