RECENT NOVELS.*
MISS CaROL1NR FOTIIBRGILL has written a clever, strong, in- teresting, and—it must be added—very bewildering book. An Enthusiast is a novel which cannot be read languidly or with indifference by any one for whom purely intellectual work has any charm; bat it is a novel which, we think, most conscientious critics will find it difficult to appraise in a manner which shall be satisfactory even to themselves. The easiest, and often the best and fairest way of reviewing a work of fiction, is to give a sketch of the story, with such subsidiary remarks as may seem needful concerning the methods of treatment ; but if we were to begin by summarising the story of An Enthusiast, readers would be certain to think the book absurd, and they might possibly think it repulsive. As a matter of fact, it is absurd, when considered as a story simply ; and yet we can ignore the absurdity of construction because it seems essential to the intellectual scheme of the book, just as we enjoy a fairy-tale not in spite of its impossibilities, but because of them, impos- sibility of incident being the one thing which gives the de Belthtesiast. By Caroline Fothergill. S vole. London Ward and Downey. —The Rivet Queens. By John Coleman. 3 vole. London : Remington and Co.—The Green Hills by the Sea. By Hugh Coleman Davidson. S vole. Loudon Hurst and Blackett.—Amor Vincit. By Hrs. Herbert Harbin. 2 vole. London Ward and Dnerney.—The Bond of Wedlock. By Mrs. Campbell Freed. 2 vols.
London : F. V. White and Co. fairy-tale its reason of being and its power to interest us. Then, as to the matter of repulsiveness,—if a woman in a realistic novel murders her child, we are shocked and repelled, because the woman has been made credible to the imagination, and therefore lives for us ; but if an ogre kills a dozen of his children and eats them afterwards, we experience no shock or repulsion, because we are emotionally unaffected by the action of beings who exist in a world of fancy, and with whom we enter into no vital relations. An Enthusiast bears no resemblance to a fairy-tale ; it is not even a romance, bat a simple novel, with persons and events of a quite familiar kind; and the element which suggests the comparison we have made is not a physical but a moral element, —an impossibility not of incident, bat of character, which we are indacel to accept for the sake of what is made of it. We are aware that this must sound rather incomprehensible ; but in speaking of An Enthu- siast, a combination of brevity and comprehensibility is by no means an easy thing to achieve. Mr. Raskin once compared popular political economy to a science of physiology which assumed that men had no skeletons Miss Caroline Fothergill's heroine resembles the hypothetical boneless man in being deficient in certain instincts and emotions which are the common property of all normally constituted human beings. What the actions are which justify this criticism we will not say, for the book is worth reading, and readers can make the discovery for themselves. The skill of the story—a skill which rises occasionally to something not unlike genius—is shown in the fact that while Maryla Goldengay is (at any rate, so it seems to us) an essentially incredible character, she is at the same time thoroughly realisable. We do not, we cannot believe in her ; but in spite of our disbelief, she lives for us, and impresses our imagination as it is not impressed by many a much less "impossible she." It is a long time since we have read anything which for sheer bright cleverness surpasses the story of Maryla's always victorious combat of wits with Mr. Knox, that unhappy but artistically fashioned combination of the prig and the cad, who has discovered her secret and who fails so miserably in his attempt to use it against her. It must, however, be admitted that he seems to have the game in his hands, and that the ex- planation of his final rout is by no means completely satisfactory, for the statement of English law by which his guns were spiked is decidedly erroneous. We were always under the impression that the belief in the legal right of a woman who has not heard from her husband for seven years to many again was confined to uneducated persons ; but as it is evidently held by Miss Caroline Fothergill, we have clearly been mistaken.
Mr. Coleman should leave the three-volume novel alone. It is too high for him ; he cannot attain unto it. Unless his short tale, entitled Curly, was one of those happy hits which cannot be repeated, he can produce an unambitious though not unsatisfying tiny cabinet picture ; bat if his new novel be a fair specimen of his work upon a large canvas, he had better eschew large canvases for the future. The title of The Rival Queens is taken from Nathaniel Lee's forgotten play ; a performance of the play supplies one of the principal incidents; and in the extravagance which tears a passion to tatters, the nineteenth- century novelist is really not far behind the seventeenth-century dramatist. John Herbert, the hero, begins life as a cavalry officer, and being driven, partly by natural inclination and partly by stress of pecuniary weather, to forsake the Army for the stage, he becomes a distinguished actor and a most successful manager. His fascinations are described as being perfectly irresistible, for be seems to have the genius of Macready, the chivalry of the Chevalier Bayard, and a certain je ne sale quoi which is all his own. Unfortunately for his peace of mind, he has in his company two " leading ladies," one the ward of his first patron, and the other the daughter of an Army comrade. One is a brunette, one is a blonde. Both are young ladies of marvellous talent, surpassing beauty, and fervid emotions ; and, unhappily, both are consumed by a devouring passion for their manager, and an all-controlling jealousy of each other. Though both have been well brought-up, and might therefore be sup- posed to have acquired the ordinary restraints and reticences of contemporary civilisation, neither is disposed to conceal either her love or her jealousy, or to shrink from any extravagance of speech or action which may make these emotions abundantly manifest. Fits of fainting and fits of passion are allotted to the rival queens with perplexing impartiality, and the young ladies "carry on"—there is no other phrase for it—in such identical manners, that unless the reader takes very careful note of the progress of the story, he may easily mistake Miss Trevor for Miss Challoner, or vice versa.. It cannot be said that either the mescaline or the feminine personages bear any strong re- semblance to ordinary human nature, perhaps because it is their habit in ordinary life to act and talk as if they were on the stage; and, unfortunately, the want of naturalness in the matter is not atoned for by any noticeable presence of it in the manner, which is characterised by the garish crudities that generally denote the work of the literary amateur. It bears far too strong a resemblance to the pictorial manner of the scene-painter, which is, of course, adapted to the end it is meant to serve ; but the extravagances of line and colour allowed to the artist whose work has to be seen at a distance, are sternly forbidden to the artist whose performances court a closer examination. Still, though Mr. Coleman writes a style which is so jerky that it may be described as dislocated, and adorns his pages with a perfectly wearisome multiplicity of theatrical tags, The Rival Queens is far from being either an unmeritorious or an unreadable book. The story has life and movement, and the tone is throughout pure and healthful. Moreover, we feel that the author is writing of a life which he knows and loves, and being genuinely interested in his own creations, he manages to make us in- terested also.
Mr. Davidson, who is, if we are not mistaken, a new writer —and we may add, a writer of considerable promise—is apparently a Manxman ; at any rate, he is thoroughly familiar with the scenery, history, and traditions of the Isle of Man, 'where the scene of his story is laid. The Green Hills by the Sea has conspicuous faults, but they are for the most part the faults which belong to inexperience,—faults which the sensible critic expects to find, and when found does not make a note of, or at the most dismisses slightingly as matters of course. Here the defects are of the usual kind; occasional clumsiness of con- struction, which shows that Mr. Davidson has something to learn in the art of plot-management, and here and there a measure of conventionality in the handling of character which indicates that the writer's imagination has temporarily failed him, and compelled him to fall back upon the traditional " busi- ness " of his art. The latter defect is—as is generally the case —most noteworthy in the treatment of those characters with whom Mr. Davidson has no sympathy. His pleasant people are for the most part really lifelike, and in one or two instances have a look of being sketched from life ; but his portraits of the more unpleasant people are often spoiled by unreal and undramatic touches. To this criticism, however, the most prominent of these unpleasant people is a noteworthy exception, for the character of Diana Knighton, an utterly unscrupulous schemer, owes none of its force to unimaginative exaggeration, but is solidly conceived and carefully painted. The central incident in which she is one of the principal actors is certainly rather too incredible, though it has been used before by at least one writer of fiction; but if we let this question of credibility elide, we must admit that the incident itself and the consequences which follow upon it are treated not only with skill, bat with real power. Diana Knighton, who is introduced to us as an exceedingly attractive young widow, conceives en overmastering passion for Frank Maddrell, a manly, iaoble-natured Manx advocate, who has, however, been rendered insensible to her fascinations by what are to him the superior charms of the simple-minded and warm-hearted Nessie Colquitt. Frank and Neasie are, indeed, engaged; but Diana refuses to give up hope. While suffering from what is in reality a slight illness, she conceives the idea of representing herself as a dying woman, and imploring Frank to marry her as she lies on her death-bed, enforcing her request by a false statement that his consent will save a large sum of money which would otherwise be lost. Frank weakly consents, and—what is more improbable still—Nessie consents also to a marriage which is destined to shatter all their hopes ; for, as a matter of course, the wily Diana at once regains her health, though not before Frank has dis- covered her treachery, and refused to be her husband in any- thing but name. The story of the after-relations of the pair is admirably told; and as the strangely tied knot is at last cut, the book has the comfortable ending without which the ordinary novel-reader refuses to be satisfied. Some of the subsidiary characters are very captivating, and the novel is so animated in narrative, so bright in conversation, and so graphic in descrip- tion, that the faults to which we have referred are by no means unpardonable.
Mrs. Martin's Amer Vincit is emphatically a pleasant story, with an old-fashioned simplicity both of structure and treatment which is very refreshing as a relief from the elaborate complexity of much contemporary fiction. Its incidents are natural and ordinary enough; but they are treated with such grace and fresh- ness that it never occurs to us to think of them as hackneyed. There is no laborious analysis of character, or obtrusive subtlety of delineation; but there is something much better than either,— the clear imaginative vision which makes the individuality of the personages in the novel stand out with a distinct and pleasing recognisableness. Amor Vincit is also pleasant in being not a worrying or harrowing book, but emphatically a soothing and restful one,—a book which is not more free from the crimes and catastrophes which are the stock-in- trade of the sensational romancer, than from the tanta- lising misunderstandings—all but impossible in real life— which are dear to the soul of the society novelist. When we are introduced in the first chapter to the heroine, Lois Stanley, she is a bright, simple-hearted girl of fourteen, living with her grandmother, who has a little school in the pretty village of Thornbridge. Mrs. Stanley is strikingly superior to her position and its surroundings ; and this superiority, combined with her unbroken silence concerning her past life, inevitably suggests that she has had a history, and that what she is concealing has some relation to her grand- daughter's parentage. When Mrs. Stanley at last breaks silence, we learn that her only daughter ran away from school with a man whose rank was much superior to her own ; and when a little girl was born, the grandmother, believing it to be a child of shame, managed to effect its abduction, and having changed her name in order to avoid discovery, took refuge in Thornbridge. The child, thus brought up in complete ignorance of her parents, and even of her name, lives a simple, natural, wholesome life, and becomes a pretty, winsome, and very loveable village maiden, her chief friends being the clergyman, Mr. Pen- rith, a most delightful old man, and Alan Moore, a boy about a year older than herself, high-spirited and sound-hearted, who, as the years pass by, naturally becomes her acknowledged lover. The story has reached this point when Mrs. Stanley makes the discovery that she has wronged her daughter ; that the marriage in which she had disbelieved had actually taken place ; and that Lois is the legitimate child of Sir Francis Leicester. Lady Leicester is summoned to Thornbridge ; but the shock of meeting her daughter again is too much for Mrs. Stanley's enfeebled frame, and in a moment Lois finds herself left alone with the mother to whom she is a stranger. The baronet's wife, a somewhat shallow, cold-hearted woman, derives more em- barrassment than delight from the discovery of her country- bred child ; but she resolves to make the best of it, and takes Lois back with her to London, insisting that her engagement to Alan Moore must be regarded simply as a part of the life she has for ever left behind. In the fashionable London world, the girl's fresh beauty attracts a crowd of admirers, notable among them being the wealthy Mr. Darlington, who is heir-presumptive to a peerage; but she is faithful to her old sweetheart, to whom she is at last united, while Mr. Darlington, who has become Lord .Ainslie, consoles himself with the love of her younger sister, Clarissa. It will be seen that the story is quite simple and unpretentious, and the charm of the book lies altogether in the telling of it, which is singularly graceful. The first volume is a specially attractive example of imaginative realism, the love- story of Alan and Lois being as pretty and dainty an idyll as we have recently read. The character-sketches are throughout excellent Mr. Moore and his wife are capital studies, and old Mr. Penrith'e portrait is one which Goldsmith would have loved to paint.
Mrs. Campbell Freed is a clever, and not unfrequently a powerful writer ; but she has an unfortunate taste for unpleasant subjects, and to readers who do not share those tastes, The Bond of Wedlock cannot be commended. It is an able book, with some bright and strong work ; but the trail of the serpent is over it all. A novel the whole interest of which centres in adultery either in intent or in act, is always bad ; and of such material this story is all compact. One hideous situation seems to have been suggested by certain evidence given at a recent trial, the brutal but not faithless hus- band of Ariana Lomax being deliberately inveigled into conjugal infidelity by his wife's father and lover, in order to secure evi- dence for a divorce. A more repulsive invention than this it is not easy to conceive, and, unfortunately, the rest of the book harmonises with it.
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