RECENT NOVELS.*
SOME months ago, in reviewing Bed Spider, we expressed a fear that the author of Mehalah was yielding to a tempta- tion to over-write himself, though we frankly admitted that the very vigorous novel then under consideration provided no evidence for the hypothesis. There is, unfortunately, plenty of evidence for it in The Gaverocks, which, while characterised by much of the force and picturesqueness in which this writer's novels are never deficient, exhibits still more of that careless baste which bespeaks the work of the manufac- turer of pot-boilers than that of the true artist. The story opens well with an admirably conceived family group, the portrait of Hender Gaverock, the obstinate, narrow-thonghted old Cornish- man, half-yeoman, half-smuggler, with his frank belief in the supernatural and his quite genuine contempt for it, being especially powerful and realisable. Hender Gaverock has, to use the Western phrase, "killed his man," one Red Feather- stone, in a sort of improvised irregular duel ; and when the younger branches of the Featherstone and Gaverock families are brought together in the course of the novel, we anticipate something of the nature of a vicarious Nemesis, which, however, is not forthcoming. At this point the story altogether loses touch of reality and degenerates into mere melodrama, a character which it retains to the end. Things are abundantly compli- cated by an exceedingly improbable and purposeless bigamous marriage of Constantine Gaverock with Juliot Featherstone, niece of his father's old enemy, which brings in its train a series of situations even more improbable than the marriage itself; but though matter amounting to a good volume is devoted to this business, its place in the story is only that of an episode, which has the faintest possible relation to the main action and to the denouement. Indeed, the denouement is a very fortuitous affair. Constantine richly deserves his end, but it comes to him in a way that has no possible relation to his previous life,—not as a Nemesis in any sense, but as an accident, the accident of being mistaken for his brother Gerans by the surly, ill-conditioned Dennis Penhalligan, who loves and believes himself to be loved by the wife of the man whom he thinks he is killing. The hap- hazard appearances of a mysterious pedlar, who seems intended for a re-incarnation of Red Featherstone, complicate the story still further, and whether he is meant to be a natural or super- * (1.) The Gaverock, a Tale of the Cornish Coast. By the Author of "Melvdah." 3 vols. London : Smith, Elder, and Co.—(2.) Idrs. Sharpe. By the Author of " Shadrach." 3 vols. London : George Bell and Sons.—(3 ) Mohammed Benani a Story of To-day. London Sampson Low and Co.—(4.) Harmonic'. By the Author of " Estelle RusselL" 3 vols. London : Macmillan and Co.—(5.) Whitspatch a Romance for Quiet People. 3 VOiF. London : R. Bentley and Son.—(6.) No Quarter. By Captain Mayne Reid. $ vols. London : Swan Sonnenscbein and Co.—(7.) The Lesters : a Family Record. By F. M. F. Skene. .2 vols. London: W. H. Allen and Co. natural personage—a point which is doubtful to the last—the pedlar is a most purposeless and clumsily managed puppet. The story is, indeed, clumsy throughout. It has powerful sections, but they are not well knit together ; there is a lack of inevitable- ness, and consequently of vital coherence, and The Gaverocks is therefore a poorer book than we ever expected to see from the pen of the author of that remarkable romance, Mehalah.
The statement that a novel may be clever and in many ways well written, and yet on the whole decidedly dull, is not suffi- ciently obvious to be regarded as a truism, and yet we do not suppose that it will be challenged by any experienced reader. At any rate, it will not be challenged by the reader who under- takes the task of grappling with the three volumes of Mrs. Sharpe. The book is one to which half-a-dozen phrases of eulogy might be appropriately applied, and yet every one of the possible eulogies must be qualified by a fatal " but " which renders it entirely nugatory. The portrait of the heroine—if, indeed, Sempronia Sharpe can be called a heroine—proves con- clusively that the anonymous author can not only conceive character vividly, but can render her conception in such a manner as to make it distinct to her readers. Then, too, the character itself is so harmoniously lifelike, that we feel as if Mrs. Sharpe were a person we had really known ; and to pro- duce this kind of impression is one of the most satisfactory achievements of a novelist. When we add that the book is written in a thoroughly good style which, if not specially vigorous, is always clear and correct, and never flabby, invertebrate, or slipshod, we seem to have described a work which possesses all the qualities essential to an admirable noveL As a matter of fact, it does possess them with one exception ; but then, that exception just happens to be the one thing needful. Mrs. Sharpe is good in this way, and it is good in that way, but it is not good in the way of being an interesting story ; and with this defect, what virtues will suffice to save it from condemnation ? Mrs. Sharpe herself is, as we have said, an admirably conceived character. She is a confirmed busy-body, with that curious mixture of selfishness and unselfish- ness which is characteristic of her tribe,—a person who will put herself to all kinds of inconvenience apparently for the sake of other people, but really that she may satisfy her uncontrollable passion for constituting herself a kind of amateur Providence, and regulating the lives of the other people in the way that seems to her best. Unfortunately for the interest of the story, her theatre of action is far too wide. We should not like to say how many characters are introduced into the novel, but they are so numerous that, with few exceptions, we have hardly any chance of differentiating them, and at some time or other, almost every one of them plays the part of a marionette whose strings are pulled by Sempronia Sharpe. Her principal protege, or victim —we really do not know which is the better word—is Squire Fortescue, a widower whose wife was in her lifetime Mrs. Sharpe's cousin; but really Mr. Fortescue is so helpless a person, so entirely a lump of clay in the hands of the potter, that Sew pronia's easy successes inspire no interest, and the complicated machinery brought to bear produces so little in the way of result, that the sight of its working only wearies us. We somehow get the im- pression that Mrs. Sharpe is clever enough to manage the affairs of an Empire, and yet she succeeds in nothing but in mismanaging the affairs of some half-dozen people, and takes so much time to do it, that three volumes are devoted to the story of the achieve- ment. For the weariness induced by such a record no good qualities can compensate us.
In most ways, no stories could well be more unlike than Mrs. Sharpe and Mohammed Bemani ; but they resemble each other in this, that their ability is much more noticeable than their interest ; and in the latter book the ability is purely literary. The author can write well, but we doubt whether he can construct a story, and he certainly cannot tell one in a businesslike, straightforward manner. The scene of the present story is laid partly in Northern Africa and partly in Russia, and the tale seems to have been penned not for merely artistic purposes, but in the interest of the natives of the former portion of the world. The author tells us that he wishes "to attract public attention to the evil adjustment of a mechanism which grinds not grain but human creatures between the upper and nether stones of Jewish and Moorish oppression,—awful mills to which the placid breeze of consular support imparts continual motion." So far as we understand it, this is a very praiseworthy end ; but surely it would have been better attained by a lucid and vigorous pamphlet or magazine article, than by a very bewilder-
ing romance, in which the nominal hero and representative of the oppressed people is certainly a nonentity and apparently a coward, and where each interest as we can feel is about equally divided between boar-hunts and mesmeric experi- ments. People who are interested in what is vaguely described nowadays as "occult science," will find in Mohammed Benani something to suit them, for there is a satisfying quantity of clairvoyance, and a momentary glimpse will be caught of one of the characters soaring away in his "astral body;" but even these readers will have to do a good deal of skipping, and other people —inveterate and undiscriminating fiction-devourers excepted— will perhaps do wisely in skipping the book altogether.
To pass from a book like Mohammed Benani to a book like Harmonia is a very refreshing experience. There is not more of what is ordinarily known as "story "than is just sufficient to keep the interest fixed and everything else moving ; but we are conscious of no want, for the canvas is filled by a number of portrait-sketches all instinct with life, character, and humour, and this is the kind of workmanship which provides the best sort of intellectual entertainment. Harmonia is a new town situated somewhere in the territory of the great American Republic, probably in one of the South-Western States, though the precise locality is very vaguely indicated ; and the book is a chapter out of its early history, which is, of course, the history of the somewhat miscellaneous group of its first inhabitants. New districts have a knack of attracting "characters,"—or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that new districts provide that scope for the variety of individual development which gives the " character " some chance of thriving ; and if the author of Harmonia had made her book a menagerie of eccentrics, she would only have yielded to a very natural temptation. We can imagine what figures Dickens would have placed—indeed, we know what figures he did place —in front of a similar background ; but the later writer has nevertheless done wisely in adhering to the modesty of Nature ; and if the angles of character are a little sharper than they would be in a more crowded and tradition-bound environment, they never attain the attractive and yet irritating sharpness of caricature. Mr. Bloss, the minister, for example, with his shallowness, his conceit, and his obstinacy, is a triumph of -humorous portraiture, but we enjoy him all the more because we can believe in him so thoroughly ; and the secret of the charm of the whole book lies in the fact that it is as true as it is vivacious and entertaining. Real fresh, spontaneous humour without exaggeration is rare, but we have it here.
Of the three remaining books upon our list we will say little, and it is a sufficing reason for our reticence that there is little to be said which could interest any intelligent human. being. Let the reader turn back to the second half of the concluding sentence of our review of Mohammed Benani, and if he omits the "perhaps," he will know what is our opinion of Whitepatch. There are in it as many mysterious passages as are to be found in all the novels of Mrs. Radcliffe, and ghosts are as common as blackberries ; but the passages lead nowhere, the ghosts only frighten servant-maids into fits, and the ghosts in the close atmosphere of the passages strangle a love-story which is by nature somewhat ricketty. Captain Mayne Reid's posthumous story—we say posthumous, because we have no previous recol- lection of it—is rather better, indeed a good deal better, because it will be enjoyed by boys who do not demand historical veri- similitude, whereas we cannot imagine Whitepatch being enjoyed by anybody ; but the reasons for its publication in the form of a three-volume novel do not exactly stare one in the face. As for The Lesters, it is a thoroughly absurd teetotal novel—the poorest of its kind, so far as our knowledge goes—with a plethora of domestic horrors, and a display of juvenile conversational eloquence the like of which has never been heard on earth, and, as we hope, never will be.
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