RECENT NOVELS.*
THE most obvious, though not the most important, remark to be made about Mr. Fraser Rae's new novel, Maygrove, relates to the author's curious, and, indeed, inexplicable choice of title. Maygrove is the residence of the Dorian family, who have occupied it since before the Conquest ; and as the author prints on a fly-leaf a passage from Mr. Ruskin.concerning" the greatest glory of a building," and gives at the back of his title-page a poem by the late Mr. Edward Fitzgerald descrip- tive of an English mansion, we naturally suppose that the home of the Dorian will, at any rate, provide a background, and probably something more. Instead of this being the case, the story drags the reader hither and thither,—from a London lawyer's office to the Australian bush, thence to a Westmore- land parsonage, the Continent of Europe, and the Dominion- of
Canada,—and though in a few chapters he is allowed to spend a short time at Maygrove, they are, almost without exception, chapters in which nothing of any importance happens. Nor do we see much more of the hero who in- herits this ancient mansion than we see of the mansion itself, though this is not a serious disadvantage, as Elfric Dorian develops from a delicate, studious, but rather uninteresting boy into a somewhat priggish and very uninteresting young man, who distinguishes himself only by becoming a Positivist and by making an extremely silly marriage. The story is, indeed, a most loose-jointed affair; and yet the book is a great deal more readable than the majority of novels, in virtue of the knowledge, both of the world .of men and of the world of books, displayed by Mr. Fraser Rae in his bright sketches of character and incident. Bob Dorian, the good-natured, happy-go-lucky, not specially scrupulous speculator; Mr. Groby, the keen company-promoter ; Pogson, the gardener who is too fond of trying gin as a remedy for the "rhetunatiz ;" Mr. Ranford, the lonely scholar ; and the two lawyers, Tarbold the reactionary, and Possil who goes with the times, are probably imaginary portraits, but they are portraits drawn by an artist who knows men, and can therefore give the touches which result in verisimilitude and vitality. Some of the most interesting pages have no apparent relation to the story ; but, after all, matter which is irrelevant but interest- ing, is preferable to matter which is relevant but dull; and into dullness Mr. Fraser Rae never deviates.
A Conspiracy of Silence is a powerfully conceived and well- written story ; but, unfortunately, its theme is so gratuitously horrible, that we shall earn the gratitude of people with quick imaginations and weak nerves by counselling them to avoid it. Charlotte March, a governess living with her widowed mother in dingy London lodgings, is saved from becoming the victim of an ordinary street accident by Eustace Sotheran, a wealthy, young country gentleman. The pair meet again in the neighbourhood of Sotheran's home, are formally introduced to each other by George Heigh, who is Charlotte's cousin and Sotheran's friend, and drift rapidly from acquaintance into friendship, and from friendship into love. All would be well, but for a terrible secret, known not only to Eustace but to George,—that there is hereditary insanity in the Sotheran family, and that Eustace's father and grandfather have both died mad, one of them by his own act. Knowing what he -does, George is of course convinced that Eustace should not marry anybody, least of all Charlotte, who has a peculiarly intense horror of madness ; and he demands that Enstace shall tell all, feeling sure that when she knows the truth, Charlotte will break the engagement. Eustace, with the cunning of incipient insanity, tells Charlotte that the taint in his family is that of consumption, and she, at his suggestion, writes to tell George that she knows all, but that she is not afraid. George is astonished, but for a time thoroughly deceived ; and when by accident he learns the deception which has been practised on Charlotte and himself, he imparts his knowledge to Mrs. March, and receives her assurance that Charlotte shall at once be told. Mrs. March, however, is a weak woman, who has been dazzled by Eustace's • (1.) Maygrore. By W Fraser Bac. 3 vole. London, R. Bentley and Bon. —(2.) A Conspiracy of Silence. By G. Colmore. 2 vols. London: Swan Sonnenschein and Co — (3.) Fettered for Life. By Frank Barrett. 3 vols. London: Chatto and Windus.—(4.) Mount Eden. By Florence Marryat. 3 vols. London: F. V. White and Co.(5 ) Jack o' Lanthorn. By 0. It. Coleridge. 2 vols. London Walter Smith and Innes.—(3.) Jezebel's Friends. By Dora Russell. 3 vols. Lc:mien : Spencer Blackett and Hallam.— (7 ) Barbara Allan, the Prorost'a Daughter. By it. Cleland. 2 vols. London and Edinburgh : W. Blackwood and Sons.—(8.) The Luck of the House. By Adeline Sergeant. 2 vols Edinburgh and London : Oliphant, Anderson, and Ferrier —(9.) The Heritage of Daley: Marsh, and other Tales. By Bret Harte. 2 vols. London : Macmillan and Co.
wealth, and she and he enter into the conspiracy of silence which gives the book its title, The horrible marriage takes place, George Heigh being now sure that his cousin is taking the step with open eyes, and during the honeymoon Eustace Sotheran betrays to his wife—who does not know what the strange symptoms mean—the first indications of his inheritance of the family curse. Those who feel inclined, after what they have read, to follow the course of Mr. Colmore's story, may do so in his own pages. The novel is written not only with imaginative force, but with knowledge of the terrible patho- logical details of the case ; but surely such details, elaborated as they are elaborated here, have no place in wholesome art.
Mr. Frank Barrett has of late been indulging in various eccentricities of narrative construction ; but in the wildest of his previous essays in involved and sensational plot-invention, he has never even approached the grotesque and sustained impossibility of Fettered for Life. We fear that we must ask our readers to take this verdict on trust, for to justify it we should have to summarise the story; and not only would this be impossible in reasonably brief space, but it would also be unfair, for Mr. Barrett tells his wild tale with sufficient skill to excite curiosity, and the reviewer who satisfied that curiosity in an illegitimate manner might justly be accused of taking an undue advantage of his opportunities. The curious thing is that, apart from its structural absurdity, Fettered for Life is one of the strongest books its author has written. There are situations in the novel which, when we are able to forget what has led up to them and to abstain from wondering what they are to lead up to, cannot fail to impress us by their vigorous imagina- tive grasp of emotion and incident. The story has the great advantage of opening well. The first few pages bring us into the thick of the action, and also into the thick of the improbability; but when the unfortunate hero, Kit Wyndham, is safely lodged in the Dartmoor convict prison, and the severe strain upon the reader's credence is for the time being relaxed, Mr. Barrett begins to show what he can do in the way of vividly imagined and vigorously handled realistic work. These prison chapters are in every way admirable, and there is unmistakable power in the story of Wyndham's despairing recklessness after he hears the false news of his desertion and betrayal by the woman for whom he has suffered so much. Hardly less fine is the record of the strange experiences in the lonely moorland cottage where he is won back to trust and happiness ; but it is impossible not to regret that such really good work should be set in a framework of fantastic license of invention.
There is nothing in the least remarkable about Miss Florence Marryat's new novel, Mount Eden, but something can be said of it which unfortunately cannot be said of all its predecessors, —that it is not only a readable but a pleasant and wholesome story. Weak points it undoubtedly has. Few people will find it easy to believe that an eminently sensible woman with great power of self-control should remain under the influence of a girlish infatuation for a man whom she has not seen for years, and whom she knows to be a cowardly and selfish criminal; and it is only in novels that a man who comes home after years of wandering, to find himself heir to a great estate, refrains from putting in an incontestable claim, and, for very thin, sentimental reasons, contents himself with the position of bailiff on his own property. Such lapses from nature, are, however, to be taken for granted in the average novel of the period; and as we expect to find them, they do not seriously spoil our pleasure when they make their appearance. Apart from them, the story is well put together and brightly told. Evelyn Rayne is an attractive heroine of the strong, capable, self-reliant kind; but Miss Marryat puts her best and most effective work into the delineation of the villain of the story, Will Caryll, who in the first volume disappears as a thief and forger in terror of the law, to reappear in the second as the apparently respectable fiance of pretty Agnes Feather- stone. His method of inducing Evelyn to keep his shameful secret is very ingeniously contrived ; and he is throughout a really admirable and lifelike example of consistent scotm- drelism.
Mr. C. R. Coleridge's Jack o' Lanthorn is characterised by a sustained equality of admirable workmanship. It depicts no overpowering emotions, it provides no thrilling situations, and it is somewhat lacking in the element of humour,—deficiencies which are often more effective than real faults in preventing a book from becoming widely popular. On the other hand, its narrative structure is so compact, its presentation of character—especially of character in the course of develop- ment and consolidation—is so capable and masterly, and its literary style so easy and yet so finely finished, that it may be commended without hesitation to those readers who care little for the coarser kinds of excitement, but who care much for the rarer qualities of truthful imaginative art. The title of the novel is very happily chosen, for illusive marsh-fires flit before the eyes of nearly all the principal personages of the story, and lead them into quagmires from which they have to straggle out wearily on to the firmer ground beyond. The book is, in short, a comedy of errors—errors in self- judgment and in judgment of others, in the choice of ideals and of the means selected to realise them—it is a picture of men and women, old and young, who, bent for the most part upon holding the true course, are for a time swayed by strong illusions, from whose subjection they are finally saved only by experience for which the price of pain and humiliation has to be paid. The seniors, with that inevitable self-confidence of age which seems to the young so unsympathetically arrogant, are confident that the friendship of Alaric Lambourne and his Bohemian cousin Clarence Burnet is perilous to both ; but they are compelled mournfully to admit their error : while Alaric, on his side, while right in following the lead of the instincts of affection, finds his Jack o' Lanthorn in the taste which he mistakes for a vocation. Even Cordelia, shrewd, cool-headed, not specially warm-hearted, is led astray by an ambition which is really alien to her true nature, and she, too, like the more impulsive natures, has to learn that things are not what they seem. The story is very interesting in itself, and is excellently told from first to last.
The young lady who gives a title to Miss Dora Russell's not over-pleasant book is a Jezebel of very inferior quality ; and the gentleman who gave her that appellation cannot be credited with much felicity in the choice of a nick-name. There was in the Queen of Ahab a certain grandeur—a " magnificence in sin," to quote Browning's phrase—which is altogether absent from the character of Frances Forth, who is simply a shallow, selfish, unprincipled, and, save for her wickedness, an irre- deemably commonplace person. Having given birth to an illegitimate still-born child in the house of her father, Colonel North, without any one being cognisant of the event but her younger sister Ruth—a situation as impossible as it is dis- agreeable—she induces Ruth to bury the body on the sea- shore, adjacent to their home. Ruth is observed by a certain ruffianly Major Audley, who threatens that if she will not marry him he will expose her sister's shame ; and of course, being a person in a novel, she at once assents to this proposi- tion, though she detests the Major, and is already engaged to a young Subaltern to whom she is devotedly attached. This act of self-sacrifice enables Jezebel to marry a middle-aged and wealthy suitor, an honourable and kindly gentleman for whom she does not care in the least, and the two inauspicious marriages are followed by complications which those who will may study in Miss Dora Russell's volumes. Against the decision of those who choose to leave the book alone, we raise no protest, for the reading of jezebel's Friends is far from edifying.
Barbara Allan is a story of life in a Scottish country town, racy of the soil, and rich in local colour, but not so relent- lessly Caledonian as to be repelling or unintelligible to the benighted Southron. SuCh a person might feel it hard to answer a question bearing upon the meaning of " multiple- poinding," or the functions of a " Dean of Guild ;" but problems of this kind present themselves with merciful rarity in Mr. Cleland's pages, and when they put in an appearance, their solution is not essential to enjoyment of his exceedingly bright and clever novel. Though the author faces his title- page with a couple of lines from the old ballad which tells how-
" A young man lay on his dying bed, For love of Barbara Allan,"
the novel is not primarily or mainly a love-story. Barbara is a winsome heroine, and we are made to feel duly interested in her relations with her three suitors ; but the real centre of interest is found in the adventures and misadventures of Barbara's father, the rascally Provost of Bennetakirk, who, after forging his friend's name and embezzling the town's funds, takes refuge in an out-of-the-way " bothy," devoted to the production of illicitly distilled whisky. Unlike most of the villains of fiction, Provost Allan really lives ; and in addi- tion to being alive, he has the further recommendation of being wonderfully amusing. Alike in his moods of abjectness and his moods of impudence, the Provost is a delightfully humorous creation ; and, indeed, the fresh, bright humour of the whole book adds the final charm to a story in which construction, characters, conversations, and incidents are all excellent.
Though it cannot be said that Miss Adeline Sergeant has put her best work into her latest novel, The Luck of the House is a good, readable book—certainly a better book than its im- mediate predecessor, Deveril's Diamond. Still, we have some- thing against it, for it is one of those exasperating narratives which owe their very existence as stories to the incredibly fatuous action of characters who are represented, not as wrong- headed fools, but as sensible, clear-headed people. Mr. Mon- crieff, for example, is an able as well as a well-meaning man, but he makes a mess of things all round by suspecting those whom he ought to trust, and trusting those whom he ought to suspect. His stupidity, moreover, is supplemented by that of his wife, who innocently plays into- the hands of the first and second villain of the story by yielding to a threat that her hue- band shall be shown some letters written by her to a former lover, letters so sweet and innocent that she need not have shrunk from their contents being known to the whole world. These irritatingly inartistic expedients which require a good, deal of space for their manipulation, do much to impair the enjoyment by the reader of a story which is otherwise very agreeable. The Luck of the House is not at all a noteworthy novel, for the characters, with one or two exceptions, represent familiar conventional types ; but Miss Adeline Sargeant has a bright, easy way of telling a story which is always pleasing.
The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and its companion stories are very various in theme and treatment; but at least three of the four are stamped with the unmistakable hall-mark of genius. " The Secret of Telegraph Hill " does, we think, fall a little below the level of Mr. Bret Harte's best and most character- istic work. The scheme of the tale is hardly in his line, and the workmanship is laboured without being effective; the best thing in it being the couple of epigrammatic sentences in which the bank manager, Mr. Carstone, indicates the special weakness of the highly respectable and devout young clerk who had got wrong in his accounts and narrowly escaped prison. " Theology may be all right for grown people, but it's apt to make children artificial; and Tappington was pious before he was fairly good. He drew on a religious credit before he had a moral capital behind it." The stories of life and character among the rough denizens of the mining districts which first won fame for their author are represented here by " Captain Jim's Friend," in which the motive is the worshipful admiration felt for a conceited, impudent, and cowardly egotist by one of those simple, unsophisticated natures which Mr. Bret Harte depicts with such penetrating sympathy. In "A Knight of the Foot-Hills," the tale of a nineteenth- century Mexican Don Quixote, the author indulges in a kind of humour somewhat unusual with him—humour which com- bines the piquancy of farce with the delicate flavour of high comedy—and the effect is very delicious ; but his really strongest work in the way of creative imagination and pre- sentation is to be found in the title-story. Few landscapes in literature are more vividly impressive than the dreary stretch of sea-bordered marsh of which Jack and Mag Culpepper are the sole human inhabitants ; and yet even against this strong background the two figures stand out with an em- phatic and arresting distinctness which make the reader feel that the landscape belongs to them, not they to the land- scape. The sketch may disappoint those who like a story and. resent a mere episode ; but even such readers cannot be blind to the sombre power of its imaginative handling. There are no signs here that Mr. Bret Harts is writing himself out.
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