THE success which has attended Miss Hawtrey's experiment throws an
interesting light on the composition of historical romances. The scene is laid in Paris in the year 1400, but we are very little troubled with the chronicles of cloak and sword, drum and trumpet, political intrigues, or international complications. With these high matters Miss Hawtrey is only indirectly concerned. Her aim is rather to tell a simple story of love and expiation, relying for the setting on her spirited presentation of the domestic life of the Parisian bourgeoisie at the opening of the fifteenth century. Intending readers may therefore be relieved to hear that there are no evidences of
* Perronelle. By Valentine Hawtrey. London : John Lane. [13a4
deep archaeological study in Hiss Hawtrey's pages ; no attempt by the patient accumulation of circumstantial details to reconstruct the environment of her dramatis personae. It is true that she devotes a good deal of space to details of costume, viands, interiors, household arrangements, and street scenes ; but in the main she relies far more on dialogue than description, on sympathy than research. In a word, her equip- ment for the task in band, as revealed in these pages, is of the slightest; the seamy side of mediaeval life—its coarseness, brutality, and recklessness—is only incidentally hinted at or lightly touched upon. Yet in spite of these limitations, perhaps to a certain extent in consequence of them, the result is a singularly engaging romance. The picture may be idealised, but its outlines are clear and its colours vivid. Miss Hawtrey has unquestionably the gift, often denied to writers of greater ability, of making every touch tell, of faithfully conveying her intentions to the reader. It is said of the works of certain composers that they sound exactly as they were meant to in the mind of the creator, and, matatis mutandis, we should be inclined to apply this saying to Perronelle. The sincerity and the certainty with which the author has set down her conception lends it a charm which renders the discussion of its historical fidelity entirely otiose. It is enough that the story is told with grace and animation, and that while some of the incidents—notably the long disappearance of the heroine—are difficult to reconcile with the canons of proba- bility, the principal characters are eminently human.
Plunging at once into her story without any preliminaries, Miss Hawtrey introduces us to most of her characters at the wedding-feast of her heroine. Perronelle is the only daughter of a poor widow, given in marriage to a sour-visaged, middle- aged merchant on whom she had never set eyes till they met at the church-door. Maitre Gilles is in love with his child- wife, but thinking to compel submission, he only rouses in- vincible antipathy. He asserts his authority, but fails to break her spirit, and when he is summoned by business to the country, leaves Perronelle in a mood of reckless rebellion, prepared to run any risk if only she can gratify her resent- ment. The occasion soon arises at the Fair of Lendit, where she falls a victim to the flattering tongue of a Royal gallant, and, deserted on the day of her betrayal, awakes to the con- sciousness of her guilt, but refuses to pay the penance enjoined at the confessional by the stern priest Pere Simon. Knowing full well that her husband will show her no mercy, she flies from home, takes refuge with a poor family in the lowest quarters of the city, enters the service of a tavern- keeper, and after years of drudgery emerges, on the death of her child, to fulfil the penance ordained by the priest.
Though the march of events inevitably lends a somewhat sombre complexion to the later chapters of the story, Miss Hawtrey does not allow the shadows to prevail entirely, and the progress of the beggar-student, Jacques Morel, a genuinely diverting figure, constrained by force of circumstances to follow the path of industry and decorum, furnishes a welcome measure of humorous relief right on to the close. The group of matrons, young and old, censorious and indulgent, who are associated with Perronelle in the early stages of her married life, are each invested with a clearly defined indi- viduality, and the dialogue throughout is fresh and uncon- ventional. We have only to add that we have seldom read a novel in which the band of the proof-reader was more con- spicuous by its absence. If the story reaches a second edition, as it deserves to, it is to be hoped that at least the more glaring of the misprints and misspellings which dis- figure its pages may be corrected. So charming a story deserves to be presented in a less slipshod guise.
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