PECULIAR!'
Ma. Howrrr tells us in the preface that this book has run through eight editions in a few days in the United States, and that the proceeds of the sale of this (the authorized English edition) are to be paid over to the fund for the relief of the wounded soldiers of the Northern armies. He speaks of it as " almost a new ' Uncle Tom,' " but though the story is far from dull, and in
• Peculiar. A Tale of the Great Transition. By Epos Sargent. Edited by William Howitt. Authorized Edition. S vole. London: Thirst and Blackest. parts, indeed, shows not a little literary power, it is only its special relation to the times as " a tale of the great transition" which has commanded for it this great popularity. When the author ventures to hope that his book may be read in 1874, we think him decidedly sanguine, unless, indeed, it is read, as it well may be, as a vestige of the feelings which accom- panied the beginning of the great struggle. In literary ability it is, of course, above the average of novels, but not of what would be called clever novels, and there are few indeed, even of those novels which may fairly be called clever that will be popular ten years after their first start in life. "Uncle Tom" will always be, we believe, one of the great works of fiction which generation after generation reads with equal delight. Its breadth of nature, its overflowing humour, the delicacy of some of the sketches, the vigour of most, the very few lay figures, and the very small props rtion of sentimental feeling to genuine creative power in the book, all mark a fiction the pictures in which had long matured themselves in the writer's imagination, and gathered fulness and force quite apart from their relation to any moral or political " purpose" which the story con- tained within it. This is not so with Peculiar. Though far from deficient in liveliness and observation, it is obviously the production either of a man with little genuine imaginative power, or, if not, with far too little time to give his imaginative power fair play. There are but one or two figures in the book that can claim to be thoroughly conceived at all. It is like a picture covering an acre of canvas crowded with nebulous figures,— sometimes, like that in the German play we have heard of, where " Adam walks across the stage going to be created,"—sometimes not even like an embryo character, but only an opinion clothed with human flesh,—in one or two cases again cleverly outlined side-figures (like Uncle Pompilard and Pat Maloney),—and here and there a few real characters introduced, like Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Jefferson Davis, with little or no attempt to work them into the imaginative substance of the story. It is altogether as far as possible from a work of art ;—a series of sketches, sometimes clever and sometimes poor, loosely united by a thread of anti- slavery purpose and patriotic enthusiasm. Nothing in the book is really worked out in the imagination. Even the effect of slavery on the mind of the mean whites, though it is the nearest attempt to an imaginative picture in the book, is but half-drawn. Almost everything is left with what seamstresses call raw selvidges,— some loose threads just sticking out that the reader feels inclined to lay hold of and pull away, though you see that if you did pull them away they would unravel gradually the whole fabric of the book. A striking example of what we mean is in the way the subject of " spiritualism " is introduced—the element in the book to which we suppose we are indebted for Mr. Howitt's name as editor of the English edition,—apparently for no literary purpose, and perhaps no purpose at all, except to give the author's view of these very questionable phenomena. This adds, however, very much to the curious sense of vague fermentation which the book suggests. Mr. Kingsley's title " Yeast " would describe the state of mind and of society of which the book gives a picture far better than anything else. It is, indeed, " a tale of transition," not only political, but imaginative, intellectual, spiritual,—a tale of eager beginnings, of gropings towards order amid chaos, of imaginative activity grappling ineffectually with a subject-matter far too large for it, of intel-, lectual anticipations trying to glimmer into clear conviction, of spiritual aspirations seeking an uncertain support on half-discerned shapes among the clouds.
Though this is the true account of the book before us, judged by any literary or artistic standard, we should be very sorry to give the impression that it is not the work both of a very earnest man and of a clever man, though a clever man either little qualified for imaginative work, or who, if he is, has cer- tainly chosen a canvas far too big and too crowded for his powers. The cleverest sketch in the book in a literary point of view is certainly not the slave called "Peculiar Institution" who gives the name to the book, nor, indeed, any of the slaves, or slaveowners, or slave emancipators, who fill its pages, but a certain Uncle Pompilard, an old gentleman dandy of benevolent heart and imperturbable good humour, who speculates on the Stock Exchange, and wins and loses in a vast scale without losing his serenity. He befriends an Irish tailor named Pat Maloney, who lives next door to him, in one of his less fortunate periods, by first putting him up to fashionable costumes, and afterwards crying up his pupil's genius for fashion. The tailor getting rich befriends his benefactor in his adversity, and the following scene,—the cleverest, we think,
in the book,—describes the reproaches he addresses to Mr. Pom- pilard when that gentleman tries to escape the tailor's friendly help, thinking he can no longer afford it :- " Pat Maloney was pacing the parlour in a great rage ; and he exploded in these words, as Pompilard presented himself :—'Arn'n't ye ashamed to look an honest man in the face, yer desateful ould sinner ?'—' What's the
bother, now, Pat Whose mare's dead ? ' said Pompilard.—' Whose mare's dead, per wicked ould man ? Is that the kind o' triflin' ye think
is goin' down wid Pat Maloney ? Look at that Well, what of it r What of it? See the cracks of it, bedad, and the dirt of it, and the damp of it, and hearken to the rats of it, yer wicked ould man ! What of it? See that baste of a cockroach comin' out as confidint as ye plazo, and straddlin' across the floor. Smell that smell up there in the corner. Dead rate, by jabbers ! And this is the entertainment, is it, ye bring a decent family to, that wasn't born to stenches and filthiness ! Typhus and small-pox in every plank under the feet of ye ! And a sick sodger ye've got in the house too; and because he wasn't quite kilt down in them swamps on the Chickahominy, ye think ye'll stink him to death in this hole of all the nastiness ! Mr. Maloney, this is my house, Sir, such as it is, and I must request you either to walk out of it or to keep a civil tongue in your bead.'—' Hoo ! Ye think to come the dignified over me, do yer, yer silly ould man! I'm not to be scaret by any such airs. I tell ye it's bastely to bring decent women and children inter slob a cesspool as this. By jabbers, I shall have to atop at Barker's, as I go back, and take a bath.'—' Maloney, leave the house:— Lave the house, is it I Not till I'm ready, will I lave the house on the biddin' of the likes of a man who hasn't more regard for the mother that bore him nor to do what you're been doin', yer ould barbarryan.'—' Quit the house, I say ! If you think I'm going to borrow money of a beggarly Irish tailor, you'll find yourself mistake; Mr. Pat Maloney 0' it's that game yez thinkin' to come on me, is it Ha ! By jabbers, I'm ready for you there too He's a beggarly Irish tailor, is he? Then why did ye have the likes o' him at all yer grand parties at Redcliff ? Why did ye have him and his at all yer little family hops ? Why couldn't ye git through a forenoon, yer ould hyppercrit, widout the beggarly Irish tailor, to play billiards wid ye, or go a Rabin' void ye, or a
main' wid yer I don't choose to keep up the acquaintance, Mr. Maloney, now that you are poor.'—That's the biggest lie ye iver Could in yer life, yer ould chats Do you tell me I lie ? Out of my house ! Pay your own debts, you blackguard Paddy, before you come playing flush of your money to a gentleman like me.'"
Though as a picture of the feelings which led to the great American civil war, and of the feelings with which it is carried on, the book is entirely onesided, painting all the slaveowners in dark colours, and depreciating even the abilities of the Southern President, we do not call it an unfair book ;—for the aim is to show that the Southerners are not intrinsically worse than the Northerners, but that it is the universal taint of the one "peculiar institution," obliging them habitually to prefer violence to reason, authority to sympathy, domination to patriotism. which degrades and petrifies characters not without the germs of nobleness. Mr. Sargent would have done better, however, if he could have given some sketch of the advantages, such as they are, which this spurious species of aristocracy has given to the higher-minded Southern leaders, instead of implying that such a thing as highmindedness is absolutely incompatible with the vicious cause of the South. It indicates, we think, something of the weakness of the writer, that he has not got any real imaginative hold of the fascination which this evil principle may exercise even over noble and cultivated minds. Mrs. Stowe, in the picture of St.Clare, describes at least the leisurely calm, and refinement, and aristocratic nonchalance, which this, like less evil aristocratic systems, unquestionably may foster in the better class of slaveowners, though we do not remember that even she ever described any respectable species of imperiousness as its natural growth, thinking, perhaps, that no kind of imperious- ness can be noble, in which she would certainly be wrong. A novelist who should draw the very best and most exceptional Southern side of the picture, without swerving into anything like charity towards this most monstrous of all modern iniquities, would do far more for the Northern cause than imaginations so completely governed by their own convictions as Mr. Sargent's, ever can do.
Peculiar is a readable story enough, and we trust its English sale may bring considerable accession to the fund for the relief of the Northern soldiers; but in a literary point of view it is a kind of olla podrida, made up of all the modern ideas that are now fermenting on that chaotic continent, so far as they tend to raise the intellectual status of the negro and magnify the just cause of the North.
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