UP HILL.*
LADY WOOD is still often vigorous and pointed. There are the same outspokenness, the same warm-hearted impatience of the un- equal distribution of this world's prizes, the same scorn for the thousand meaningless conventionalities and shams that make up so much of fashionable life, as before. But Lady Wood—if indeed she takes any note of the remarks of her critics—will think we are never satisfied. No sooner has she, comparatively speaking, abjured the extravagance and romance of incident of which we have at various times complained, than we have another lamentation to make. The incidents are now, if not common-place, at any rate about common-place people and things, and the scene is laid in the most ordinary and hackneyed semi-fashionable life. We have lost, with the romantic incidents, the picturesque and graphic descriptions to which they gave occasion, but which certainly are not necessarily a part of and do not belong exclusively to them ; descriptions of wild, natural scenery in its grandest aspects ; of the clashing of the ele- ments, of storm, and of fire, and of bitter winter ; and of the clash- ing of those still wilder elements of human will, goaded by poverty, and ignorance, and injustice. We have hoped in vain to come upon passages such as we have learnt to expect from her pen, in which the struggles of right instincts with envy, and parsimony, and sordid greed, and the many forms of vice begotten of dire poverty, relieved by the occasional gleam of generous impulse or the steady light of religious faith, have been both powerfully and picturesquely de- scribed. The temptations of the poor, their characteristic virtues and defects, their alternate conquests and defeats, their manners and ways, and turns of thought and expression, have often been most happily illustrated by Lady Wood, who has not even been afraid to venture on a delineation of them when roused to that state of unreasoning class-animosity which culminates in the fury of a mob. We miss, too, Lady Wood's four-footed favourites, and remember how we had counted in any fresh tale upon passages similar to those admirable ones in Wild Weather, in which the simple, im- poverished old squire assembles his dogs, and considers of parting with them and his old hunters, while his illiterate old dame is divided between the anxieties of penury and the longing to bestow her usual largesse on the poor brutes. Where, too, is the humour and where the pathos which redeemed the extravagance of incident in Lady Wood's former works?
It is true that in this new story Lady Wood has again made herself the champion of the poor, but it is not of the poor as a class, nor of individuals from that class. She has selected a heroine from the middle- class—a class, we are pretty sure, that Lady Woud knows but little about—a governess, not a typical one in any sense, but one who is altogether exceptional, and who does not at all require a champion ; for Miss Phoebe Philtre, daughter of Philip Philtre, apothecary—Lady Wood leans to alliteration and appropriateness in the names of her low-born, up- start creations—is an exceedingly beautiful, an exceedingly wise, an-exceedingly clever, and an exceedingly cool individual. Thus we feel none of the interest of a gallant knight for a distressed damsel, more especially as, though the lady is very poor, it is only for a very short time, and in that very short time her endurance is not grand enough to resist an attempt at self-destruction, and as, *Up Hill. By Lady Wood. London: Chapman and Hall.
though her virtue is sorely tempted, it is only because to fall would be to ensure temporary comfort, and not because she loves as well as starves. Moreover, Lady Wood deprives us of our remaining hope of liking Phoebe when she marries her, of her own choice, to what the insurance offices call, and Phoebe knew to be, a 'bad life,' in the person of a pompous, unattractive millionaire of double her own age. In only one respect can we feel that the book is a success,—namely, in the admirable picture it gives us in Phosbe- after the first few chapters, of which more anon—of well-conducted, self-controlled, courteous, and conscientious common-sense, under circumstances of unusual difficulty ; as the wife of an exacting and irritable invalid, the stepmother of a rampant girl of tremendous animal spirits, the admired of manly youth, and rank, and wealth, and the envied and slandered of her own sex. But we cannot compliment Lady Wood on well-sustained and consistent char- acter-drawing. This perfect wife, mother, and friend—we are not speaking satirically—who loves her imperious step-child with such deep and such gentle and patient love, and who has done the same, observe, from her very first interview with her, is thus introduced to Arria :—
", Come here and speak to this lady, Arria,' said her father ; she is going to teach you to road pretty stories, and to be a good girl.'—' I hate reading,' said Arria, and I had rather be a naughty girl, and scream when I please.'—' Will you not come and shake hands with me ? ' said Miss Philtre. am sure we shall bo good friends.'—' No thank you.'—' Why not ? ' and the tight-fitting black kid glove was extended from the crape-trimmed cloak.—' Because I don't like you,' said the child.—' Ah ! you will learn to do so by-and-by, my sweet child,' said the young lady coaxingly.—"'Tis only that mimic is scared by the black, ma'am. She will fool quite different by-and-by,' and nurse was herself scared by the extraordinary alteration in Miss Philtre. Miss Philtre said ' No doubt,' curtseying to Mr. Brabazon, and departed, proposing to come in the afternoon for a couple of hours to make his daughter's acquaintance. She left the house grinding her tooth with rage, both against the father and the daughter. ' All in good time, miss,' she said. She had been trained in the best way to overcome intractable children, having had the teaching and general management of the youngest classes in the schools where she had bartered her services. for tuition. Many had been the slights and vexations lavished by the wealthy young ladies on the poor teacher,—treatment which she endured with unfailing sweetness. But with the small children she had the strength and venom of a serpent. She coiled herself round their lives. They dared not complain ; for no one would have believed any accusation against one so gentle. No one but Miss Philtre knew so well how to keep an ailing child quiet. 'No doubt,' the mistresses said, 'she had derived the knowledge from her father, who was a doctor.' Little creatures turning half delirious on their pillows, and shouting their wild fancies from one end to the other of the dormitory, sank into half-uttered sobs when Miss Philtre fixed her eyes on them. See how excellent a manager is that girl.' said Mrs. Wise, the head
mistress. She has no occasion to utter a syllable, and there is profound. silence in the room. Nurse Clayter is not to be compared to her.' Miss Wright, the second mistress, suggested that she probably had uttered some very efficient syllables on other occasions, and that the pupils remembered these as soon as she appeared."
And the perfect lady in manner, and Christian in feeling, whom no temptation can tempt from the strictest path of honour and rectitude, had imposed upon her father's patients, and visited the hospitals dressed in men's clothes, to learn surgery, and had, we may fairly assume from the following passage in the opening pages of the first volume, been intended by Lady Wood for a very different development indeed. We are grateful to our authoress for this divergence from the disgusting character of a low and sharp adventuress :-
"Phoebe had been hardened by adversity into a woman of action. She entered into a negotiation with a surgeon and apothecary to take the business left vacant by her father. She showed the books, and sug- gested what could be made of the patients whose names were therein entered. John Bath, Esq., a family midwifery case ; second child within twenty months ; likely to produce an infant every year ; mother always ailing ; may safely be put down at twenty pounds per annum. Miss Crisp, a maiden lady of great wealth ; very fanciful about her health, and that of her dogs and birds ; a hundred per annum may certainly bo calculated on from her, as she pays as much for attendance on her animals as she would for herself. N.B.—The progeny increase even faster than the olive branches of John Bath, Esq. My poor father,' said the astute young lady, wiping her eyes, which did not require it, ' was too liberal. lie did not charge enough for the exercise of his skill. If it suits you, my dear Mr. Reach, to take his practice, you will excuse me if, as a person behind the curtain, I recommend you to be exceedingly moderate in your charges for the first twelve months. This laps the patients into security. They pay their bills. They think how well they have been let off—' Dear Mr. Reach I So attentive as he has been too !' Continue your assiduity during the following year. Be careful never to neglect a shopkeeper's wife for one of higher rank. They never forgive a slight of that kind. At the following Christmas you may indemnify yourself for your past forbearance. They may open their eyes, grumble, use bad language, but if, my dear Mr. Reach, you are as clever in the use of your occasional opportunities, as I know you are in a general way, you will have wormed yourself so. entirely into their confidences that they will find it very difficult indeed to cast you off, even if your charges are twice as high as before. One word more. Your surgery is not the only place where there is a skeleton concealed. There is one in every closet in the neighbouring families. I can tell you where and how they are hidden. If they know that you are conscious of these *spirits* mysteries, your held "will be all ' the stronger. I need not warn you to keep your knowledge concealed from Mrs. Reach. A secret once revealed °eases to be profitable. It is not every woman who can keep her own secrete, much less her husband's. Any information I can give you is quite at your service.'—' I am really very grateful, Miss Philtre.'—' Yes said the clever and not too refined Phcebe, 'I can put you up to a thing or two.'" The other sketches are open to the same criticism. Mr. Braba- son is sometimes a pompous fool, infinitely his wife's inferior in brains, at other times he is a thoughtful, well-read man, with very intelligent views on business and political questions. Mrs. Semple and her daughter are at their first introduction meant to be—as their name denotes—simple, kindly, colourless people ; but to suit the exigencies of the story they grow into utterly unscrupu- lous plotters and outrageously rude and ill-mannered females. Lord Arden, again, not only seeks to undermine Phoebe's virtue in the day—for it was but one day—of ber dire poverty, but impor- tunes her after her marriage to say that she loves him, and sud- denly leaves her for a long tour abroad, in his conscientious desire not to tempt her from conjugal faithfulness. Even the meek -curate, made of rose-water and milk, suddenly becomes suspicious, knowing, and worldly, and dodges his lordship about in order to defeat imaginary designs, of which so innocent a being was
not likely to have conceived. Arria alone is consistent throughout, but it is the consistency of a heroine of burlesque. Nearly every scene in which she plays a part is an absurd
-extravaganza. She betrays everything—of course, always, in the main, to the advantage of her beloved Phcebe, re- peating or telling things that a child of four of ordinary parts— and Arria is particularly clever—would know by instinct it must keep to itself. It is too absurd for anything ; so very terrible an infant never was allowed to go at large, we will answer for it. This same tendency to burlesque is apparent throughout. But it is burlesque without humour. The scene in which Mr. Brabazon satisfies Mrs. Semple's inquisitiveness as to the contents of a mysterious case, on her promising to accept and take the contents when he presents them, which turn out to be blue-pills, is the only -one that raises a smile. This is sad, when we remember the -old squire and the parvenu in Wild Weather! We could well spare the incessant small cynicisms scattered thickly through the volumes, which travesty rather than describe human weakness. " There is no -disinterestedness in any attachment but that of a mother for her dolt of an offspring," says Lady Wood. " Children's attachment is ever of the weakest kind, and those who lavish tenderness on them sow the sand." "No relatives to give begrudged presents." "She knew her sex, and judged that Mrs. Semple hated the wearer of the watered-silk and the lace veil." " For though she had no love to give, she had gratitude, humanity, and a sense of duty, which made an excellent substitute for that fragile and transitory pas- sion. Concrete lasts better than alabaster in the high-road of life, though one is matchless in beauty, and the other a compound of ordinary materials." Such passages are bad art, for they do not .really describe humanity, but only the little and perverse section of it, which the author may have studied.
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