PENNY NOVELS.

VOVEL writing has long been a profitable occupation, but it /.1 is only in quite recent times that it has been found to offer a. respectable fortune to persons of very ordinary powers, and at the- expense of very little pains. Prospecting over the field of fiction is a better speculation than going to British Columbia, for here- the nuggets lie on the surface. This arises from the rapid multi- plication of periodicals intended chiefly for the lower classes, whose taste in fiction is still of a primitive kind. All these journals. depend for existence upon stories in which constant and unbroken excitement, produced very often by the rudest machinery, must be- the main element. There is more profit than honour in producing these peculiar works, but this very fact naturally attracts many persons to the task. It would be a sad case if there were no. writers left who cared more for substantial fame than for present. rewards, but it is plainly the truth that the larger number are constrained to defer working for fame and honour till that hazy future day, which in most cases never arrives. This is the motive power of all the various " sensations " which furnish the staple of public amusement at the present day. If a man under- takes a history, he must be content to work hard for years without looking for gain. To some, happily, this is an immaterial con- sideration, but the majority of labourers must work in vineyards. where they are paid at the close of the day. A writer in one of the penny journals is said to have been paid 25/. a week for- three or four pages of a continuous story. It is no uncommon thing for a tale to run through 52 numbers,—which would be at the rate of 1,3001. for a novel—certainly not a bad price, consider- ing that these works are not heard of beyond the circle of readers. for whom they are originally produced. It would be difficult to point out any other department of literature which holds out so good a prospect, with so great a degree of certainty. Journalism is said—particularly by those who have never tried it—to be a sure road to wealth, but it at least involves much harder work than the popular fiction-writer is called upon to perform. The- staff of one or two of the leading chief miscellanies is not without men of some little repute in the world of authorship, and the principal story at present running in one of the halfpenny jour- nals is understood to be by a novelist whose successes are just now the talk of the town.

The common opinion of tales of this kind is that they are dis- reputable, if not immoral, in tone, and that they foster a depraved taste in the poor. The first objection is entirely baseless, as any one may perceive who takes the trouble to read the cheap publica- tions; the second is founded on a total misapprehension of the re- lation which exists between writer and reader. The author who addresses the educated classes has a wide latitude allowed him. He may choose his own subject, and adopt his own mode of treatment. But the poor are arbitrary, and will have exactly what they wish for. The demand is for an article of a certain pattern and quality, and if something of a superior kind is attempted to be substituted, the buyer very soon goes to another manufactory for what he requires. "Elevate the taste of your readers—try them with something better than they have been used to." It is excel- lent advice, but it would seem that the lower classes do not want, and will not have, their tastes elevated in this particular direction. The experiment has been thoroughly tried, at great cost, and with notable results. The best and foremost of these miscellanies, the London Journal, once discarded its usual writers, and Sir Walter Scott's novels—at that time not attainable in a cheap form—took the place of the true popular fiction. Living writers of consider- able reputation contributed original stories, and a great deal of money was spent in the attempt to make this new and very superior article stand upon its legs. The experiment -Wes a hopeless, and almost disastrous, failure. Sir Walter Scott and the other great men elevated the journal so high, that the atmosphere was soon found to be too rare, and asphyxia might have followed if it had not been dragged down to earth again. It is the first essential of really popular fictions that they should not be of too high a standard. The conditions of the work are clear enough, and of course no one need undertake it who feels that his soul is a great way above it. The man who began a novel for one of these miscellanies on true artistic princi- ples, and seeking to delineate character naturally, would probably in a week or two be waited upon by an anxious deputation of proprietors and publishers, begging him to throw in more "sensa- tion." If he persevered in his £Lz.sthetic tastes, he might receive a polite note, requesting him to continue his enlightened labours else- where. In that case he would be very likely to sacrifice his taste to his convenience.

Considerable ingenuity and tact are usually shown in the development of these peculiar stories. Many points that the three- volume novelist is obliged to study can very safely be disregarded. Attention to artistic uniformity, fidelity of description, or a regard to probabilities would be labour and time thrown away. But the plot must be exciting. Some of the principal characters should be persons in high life, and there must always be a poor young man or girl in the story, to step in between an unscrupulous lord and his schemes, and to utterly baffle and confound him at every turn. Servants—ladies' maids especially—must be on terms of familiarity with their mistresses, the depositaries of their most dangerous secrets, and the chief sharers of their confidence. The lady, who is the author of a' story called the "Woman in Black," pays great attention to this most needful point, as in the following passage :—

Lady Windermere was standing at the dressing-room window, watching the night breeze She listened very attentively to Daisy's account of all that had transpired in the kitchen. "Gone ' she murmured, almost with the desolation of Evangeline, in Longfellow's exquisite poem when she discovers the departure of

her lover, and says " Gone ! is poem, gone ?"

"Alas ! my lady," said Daisy ; "he is indeed gone, and that twining serpent of a T. is gone with him. What shall we do ?"

"We must go, too, Daisy," said the marchioness ; "I think I know to whose house they are gone at Brighton, Daisy ; I believe it is to Lady Mackenzie's and the only thing I can do is to follow as soon as possible.

" Oh ! but my lady, how can you manage that ? Will you not be recognized ?"

" No, not if I travel at night, closely veiled, and in this black hood and mantle."

"But, my lady, when you get to Brighton, what can you do there ?"

And so on. It is no unusual thing to find the lady of title in these stories consulting her maid as to her future husband. The poor man must always get the better of the rich, and if the hero of the story is very poor, and falls in love with a peeress, and mar- ties her, in defiance of natural obstacles, the tale is sure of a good run. No doubt these representations of high life are, to the last degree, absurd and ridiculous ; but suppose the readers are satisfied with the false, and would not be satisfied with the true? If a man prefer a brass chain, it would be bard to insist upon his wearing a gold one. In the love scenes, again, there is great room for the imaginative powers. M. Trollope's delicate pencillings of young lovers would be laughed at as caricatures. In these stories lovers' oaths must be something like oaths—strong, passionate, and fiery, and going to the very verge of bad language ; their dialogues must end with the lady in an ecstacy of tears, and the gentleman In a paroxysm of emotion, calling heaven and earth and all the

powers to witness that he will be true to death. If they part, it must be with speeches so moving as to bring to the tender reader the luxury of crying. If the lady can conveniently be left re- clining in the arms of her maid in a fit, and the gentleman wiping the heavy drops of agony from his manly and distracted brow, so much the better will be the effect. The ancient form of "pro- posing" on one's knees is still strictly adhered to, and the lover never forgets to bedew the lady's hand with briny tears, and after- wards to cover it with burning kisses. Tears are always "briny," and kisses always "burning" in these fictions—the one pleasantly counteracting the other. The presence of a rival is of great use as we may see in the following passage:—

Ellen trembled ; she feared this coarse villain, in spite of her pro- tector.

"I have told you again and again, Hugh Rowley, I never can be yours," she said, in a low voice. "Why renew such a discussion now ?" "Because the case is different," he cried, savagely. "Nothing is altered. I hate you as much as ever," returned Ellen. " S'death ! girl, don't provoke," he exclaimed, seizing her by the wrist, and looking into her face menacingly. "I tell you the case is different. When I asked you before my wife lived ; she is dead now."

Ellen shuddered as die cold-blooded villain uttered these words, with a tone of savage joy.

" Yes, dead," he continued ; "and I can prove it. She no longer stands in the way. Besides, I have you now in my power."

"How ?"

"If you resist me, your lover dies," he muttered in her ear.

To vary these scenes there should have been a murder committed at some stage or other of the story, or, at the very least, a fair prospect of one must always be held out. Nothing can be finer than the way in which a trifle of this kind is worked up in a story before us :- He lay a moment, stiff and motionless with horror, conscious of a faint, quivering motion in the bed above, and a faint trickling noise, which might have been the dead man's blood slowly creeping through the saturated bedding, and dropping on to the floor. It was the horrible fancy that he felt the sickening fluid hot upon his back that aroused him from his torpor, and scrambling to his feet, he rushed to the window and looked out.

Looked out upon "to be continued next week," which here falls in very appositely. It rather adds to the enjoyment of the reader to be disappointed in this way. Not long ago, it happened that a writer of a sanguine turn, and filled with high aspirations, began a story of a tamer kind, and the publication in which it appeared suffered rather severely. Thereupon, (after a respectful but earnest deputation) a convict was despatched on a roving commission through the tale, always seeming to be on the eve of slaying a prominent character. The story was successful almost immediately.

The art of concluding each number with a special " sensation " is perhaps the most difficult, but at the same time the most necessary of all, in writing popular fictions. There have been many burlesques of these stories, but none of them are half so amusing as the originals. From half a dozen before us we may select fair examples of the kind of termination that is looked for to each week's part. In the following, taken from the "Poor Girl," the wife is speaking to her husband:— " My lord, you have your secrets."

He was- almost suffocated in the attempt to ejaculate. He tried to appear calm and cold. He waved his hand, as though he considered the proposition puerile.

"Well!" he exclaimed.

"And you have one in this house," she continued, with a very pecu- liar and pointed emphasis. He gazed at her searchingly, wonderingly, but his lips moved mechanically, and he ejaculated- " Well, madam !"

"We stand, then, my lord, for the present, on the same ground," she rejoined, in a voice which thrilled him. "I have my secrets. I, TOO, nays ONE IN Tins HOUSE!"

As she uttered those words, with a shrillness which seemed to pierce his brain as though each word was a heated barb, she glided from the room, leaving him transfixed with bewildering, torturing amazement."

The physical effect upon the nerves of a sudden shock is ordinarily very astounding. Thus, above, we have the marquis almost suffocated, and with the feeling as of a heated barb in his brain—which, though hard to imagine, must doubtless be a very terrible sensation. Immediately before, however, we are told that "his blood almost froze in his veins," so that the heated barb might have worked nothing more than an agreeable change of temperature. Afterwards, we behold him tossing on the ground with all the wildness and frenzy of a maniac. Then, again, we find him thus :—

At length, maddened by the thoughts which whirled successively through his brain, scorching and blistering it with the images they con- veyed, he turned round, and advanced upon her with glaring eyes, and foaming at the mouth like a tiger.

"Woman !" he said, as the white froth bubbled on his lips; "when I first saw you, I believed that your—that your—past history —" She turned upon him like lightning, and, with her finger pointed menacingly at him, she exclaimed, in a clear, firm, determined voice-

" To be continued next week," or something to the same effect. Here is another good ending to a number :— But they had not done with him yet.

There was a flash, a loud report, a cry of pain, and then again all was as silent as the grave.

Thus the reader is left for a whole week to conjecture which of the characters is disposed of. Take another example :—

Human nature could bear these taunting words no longer.

"Perish, then !" cried George Robertson, as he drew a pistol from his belt and fired at the hag,—" perish, witch ! and, ill-omened witch that you are, never more shall your screech-owl voice vex mortal ear !" With a scream that mingled with the report of the pistol, she fell backwards from the rock.

Sometimes a good " sentiment " answers as well as the tragic element, as in the following passage from the "Factory Girl" :—

Presently Lady Olympia's alabaster arms fell loosely from Dora's neck. The emotion had been too powerful for her, and she had fainted. "Dear me, how unfortunate !" cried the Countess of Luxborough, as she hurried to her niece's assistance. "This is one of the results of my poor sister's foolish whims. What a disgraceful scene, to be sure ! and how unlucky that Olympia should insist upon keeping up such a low acquaintance !"

"Pardon me, Lady Luxborough," said John Faversham, advancing from amidst a group of factory people, "pardon me, if I venture to con- tradict your ladyship. The acquaintance of Dora Morton can never bring any disgrace to your niece. If Lady Olympia were the Queen of England, the friendship of a pure and virtuous girl would bring no dis- credit upon her."

Occasionally the writers introduce reflections which are not quite so impressive as the love and murder scenes. One gentleman calls his reader's attention to the following facts :-

In honest minds a sparkling glass of good wine, or even spirits, will, warming the heart, produce cheerfulness and excite genial thoughts ; the most pious divines have felt its pleasant influence, while even an excess of liquor will scarcely ever impel a man of mind or native good- ness to any very glaring act. The weak it makes weaker and more foolish ; but its fearful influence is chiefly seen upon the naturally wicked.

Another observes, in a more pathetic vein :— We live in a very wicked world, everybody knows that, and all we can hope is, that when it is broken up, things may be mended.

As a touch of description take the following, by the author of the reflection just quoted :—

Roll went the thunder until the ruins shook, threatening to bury them in bricks and mortar every moment. Flash upon flash of light- ning lit up the whole interior of the place, and the terrified upturned faces of the doctor and his fair friend, both of them with spectacles on, which must have given them a very comical appearance to the Spirit of the Storm, as it rode on a thunderbolt over their heads.

These extracts, taken from stories now in course of publication, are sufficient to show that an ill-educated man, of somewhat coarse tastes, and with the wildest possible notions of the life and manners of persons above him in station, has peculiar qualifica- tions for pleasing the readers of cheap miscellanies. The chief thing to satisfy is the natural craving of the uneducated for exaggerated representations of "high life," and their almost barbaric taste for tragical incidents. They like to be taken amid scenes which are wholly different from those which they encounter in their own daily experience. The poor factory girl likes to with- draw in her dinner hour to the saloons of the great, as they are supposed to be by persons whose acquaintance does not reach higher than the footman, and to read of ladies who habitually make their purchases on the following principle :—

She sent one of the waiters out for a trifling article, and gave him a five-pound note to pay for it.

There is something fascinating to her in the notion that lords occasionally go round workshops and mills to pick out a wife, laden with jewels and gold to bestow on theobject of their choice. Even when their own class is delineated, they expect something different to the men and women whom they actually meet. The authoress of the "Woman in Black" understands this, as we shall see in the

following passage :—

Suddenly to this corner came a man, who was hurrying along, singing "Sally in our Alley," when, perceiving the outline of a form leaning against a tree, he raised his lantern, which threw a strong light on the face of Belinda, and crying out-

" Oh, Gor !—oh, my ! The Woman in Black !—my lady's ghost ! Lord have mercy upon me !"

He turned round, took to his heels, and never once stopped to look behind him till he found himself at the door of his mother's cottage, and heard, in answer to his terrified and reiterated knocks—

"I'm a eomin' 1—I'm a comin' 1 Arn't you ashamed of yourself, Stephen, to get your poor mother out of her warm bed at this time o' night to let you in, when you've been coorting that minx of a Kitty Scrobb ?"

"Oh, mother, let one in, for mercy's sake !" cried Stephen. "I've seen a-ghost !—I've seen the Woman in Black ! I've seen my lady's spirit, and for all I know, she may be a'ter me this blessed moment to do me a mischief."

All this is supremely childish ; but so are the tastes which the writers seek to gratify. They write down to the level of the un- derstandings of their readers, and there is this excuse for them, that if they must write at all, there is no other course open to them. Their works are, at least, free from a demoralizing tendency. The worst of them contrast advantageously with the popular order of French fiction, and it may be found that practically, the readers not being in the habit of reflecting on what they read, no abiding impression is produced on their minds by romantic and grotesque representations of love and marriage, and of human life in all its forms. It would, perhaps, be hard to deny hard working men and women the pleasure they derive in their leisure hours horn reading stories which are too highly flavoured to suit a cultivated taste, but which contain nothing destructive of morals. They at least furnish amusement to thousands of the working classes, and serve to divert their minds from the deadening influences of monotonous toil ; in short, they find there the exact kind of recreation they seek. The poor will enjoy themselves in their own way. We should be glad to see these stories assume a higher standard—w. could wish that the working classes would read " Orley Farm" and the " Newcomes," instead of the "Blood-stained Hand," or, the "Threefold Murder;" but we are afraid that it would be impossible to force them into a relish for the dainties which are the delights of finer palates. At any rate, it requires a man of very rare ability to attempt the work of reforming their tastes.