LITERARY REMAINS OF LADY CAMILLA GURDON.* Tuts is a very

pleasant little volume of miscellaneous stories, poems, articles, and sketches, many of which are reprinted from magazines and newspapers, while others are now first given to the public. To those who knew Lady Camilla Gurdon personally, the book will be precious as a memorial of a charming and loveable individuality ; to those who did not know her, and who now first make acquaintance; with her writings, the perusal of it will bring the peculiar sense of blended gain and loss that belongs to the experience of making friends in spirit with those who have already passed beyond the possibility of meeting in the flesh. Towards the end of the volume, amid a collection of stray thoughts and moralisings, we come upon a passage calling attention to that mysterious gift of charm which, like magic, gives to some men and women a wholly inexplicable influence and ascend- ency over their kind

:- "In life, to this day, we now and again come across some witch or wizard, some privileged person to whom all things are for- given because they possess this extraordinary charm. No one can say of what it consists ; it neither belongs specially to beauty, nor to talent, nor yet to goodness—to this perhaps least of all."

That charm in living people is not dependent upon goodness is, alas, but too true ; it is one of the facts of life that never quite cease to trouble the didactic conscience in men and women awake to their responsibilities. It is also true that in life it is impossible to get behind the secret of charm. But we are not sure that this is so in literature. Charm in a book, we should be inclined to say—were it not so dangerous to

• Memories and Fancies : Suffolk Tales, and other Stories, Fairy Legends, Poems, Afiecellaneous Articles. By the lens Lady Camilla Garden. Loudun Long:n=4 Gran, and Co.

make sweeping assertions—(though often wanting to grace good intention and moral purpose) is never found where style and thought are not entirely Bound and sweet and wholesome. Indeed, the mystery of charm in writing might perhaps be explained as the result of a happy conjunction of the semblance and the reality of things good and beautiful ; of a combination of delicate taste and cultivated style with right judgment and kindly disposition. But whether or not such an account of the matter will serve for an explanation of literary charm in the abstract, it will certainly express very

well the nature of the attraction we feel in these Memories'

and Fancies. Lady Camilla Gurdon had the sympathy of a good and refined woman with gentle affections and virtuous dispositions of human nature in many grades of life and under a great variety of circumstances ; and she had the discern- ment that distinguishes the common from the familiar, and the homely from the vulgar. She had also the poet's feeling for the soul of beauty in trivial things, and the familiarity of a cultivated mind with the things not trivial that educate taste and form style. She attempted no bolder flight in fiction than that of the short story dominated [by a motive of character or sentiment; and probably she did well so to restrict her efforts. For charm is a gift that dies under strain, and the inspiration that suffices for a great deal of minor work like these miscellanies, cannot always be trusted to hold out through the elaboration of one great book. But minor work is all the better for carrying with it the feeling of having been done in what King David calls " a large room ;" and it is the feeling of a large mental and spiritual atmosphere and of a. liberal social background, that makes much of the charm of Lady Camilla's stories and sketches. Her love of the country was almost a passion, and she confesses to having derived much pleasure in life from one sense not sufficiently recog- nised as ministering to the higher enjoyment, to wit the sense of smell To me, a large part of the delight of the country is the variety of wholesome sweet odours; the breath of the cows ; the smell of the newly-turned earth; the aroma of Scotch firs at sunset; the fragrance of fading leaves in autumnal woods."

Much of her childhood was spent in Devonshire—and Devon- shire scenery figures largely, and always with the most affec- tionate association, in her stories. Ireland and Hampshire fur- nished other scenes and characters, and "Suffolk Stories" have a distinct place in the volume. It was in Suffolk that the few years of her married life were passed. Everywhere "fancy is blended with " memory," and memory with fancy, so that though it would not be fair to say of any one sketch or story that it is strictly autobiographical, yet all the pieces taken together give a strong, and, we believe, true, impression of being a reproduction of the personal experience as well as the personal character of the author. One gets this impression particularly strongly from some of the stories of childhood, and such a sketch of character as that entitled "Gertrude." By which we do not mean at all that Lady Camilla was ever "Gertrude,"—only that this picture of a bright, impulsive, absent-minded girl, whose young enthusiasms are by and by swallowed up in a vaguely indicated life of society fashion and

grandeur, was a real memory of some friend of the writer's, life. Gertrude is introduced d propos of a bundle of old letters,

out of which has tumbled one from the wild girl announcing that she is studying" Political Ecomy" (economy), and inviting her friend to luncheon. The letter is described as a remark- able production, sinning against all the proprieties of corre- spondence, even to the point of being sealed with a manifest thumb-mark. The description of the girl herself and the way in which she carries off her friend will serve as a good example of the author's vivacious manner of sketching scene and a character

This student of political economy was dressed most untidily in a tumbled green cotton gown, with a brown bat hanging at the back of her head, and an ugly old grey shawl bundled up round her pretty throat, fastened all askew with a diamond brooch. Her white silk handkerchief had slipped round to the back of her neck, her black kid gloves were a, mere wreck, and her nose was through a hole in her net veil. She whirled me away with her in her little carriage. I can distinctly recall a feeling of uneasiness as we dashed past carts and waggons; and once,. when for no apparent reason we bumped over twenty successive mud-heaps at the side of a wide smooth road, I ventured to expostulate gently, my driver was so busy repeating to me a remarkable passage in Bordello' that she paid no heed either to my suggestions or to the jolting of the carriage. Overhead the sky was of a pure soft blue, with little fleecy clouds floating about in it : the broad meadows by the river were yellow with the first fresh green of tender young leaves. The air was full of spring scents,—the smell of the blossoming hedgerows, of the moist earth, of the sticky spikes of horse-chestnut flowers shining out of the dark foliage like Christmas candles, and of the lilacs and monthly roses in the cottage gardens. In the cool depths of the hazel copses the nightingale was singing as though his heart would break for joy ; and in the spaces where the wood had been cleared the ground was blue and purple and yellow with hyacinths and orchids and poisonous spurge. Over the downs the swift shadows were chasing the sunlight, and a gentle caressing wind was blowing across the wide sweep of grass. By my side Gertrude was recklessly letting the reins float on the horse's neck, repeating poetry in her fresh enthusiastic young voice, mispronouncing most of the long words, bounding fearlessly over others, and emphasizing the lines at her own sweet will. When we reached our destination, luncheon was already awaiting us. Gertrude sat down at the head of the table with an air of conscious majesty, and exerted herself for my benefit as an accomplished hostess. She offered me potatoes with my tart, and filled up my glass of claret with a liberal supply of port. I might, perhaps, also add that she constantly thanked herself effusively when she helped herself to any dish. For absence of mind was one of this young woman's most charming faults."

A delightful and very tender little sketch of character in a very different grade of life, full also of local colour and the 'regret for a day that is gone, is "An Old Devonshire Woman." "A Child's Story" at the end of the book brims over with the mingled poetry and realism of nursery experience. And we like very much, in "A Letter from a Deserted House," the glimpse of sister "Rose in her white pinafore, getting out her manuscript books with, 'I make it a rule to write poetry for an hour every evening after tea,'" and the pathetic story of the rabbit that lost its tail, with George's quaint, consolatory comment on the situation :—

"Do you remember the story of Harry's and George's rabbits,—how Harry's rabbit o. out of its hutch and disappeared for a week, and at last crept home without its tail to die ? and how, when Harry cried bitterly over his dead tailless rabbit, George tried to comfort him 'Don't cry, Harry, dear; don't cry. It's only the body you see ! The tail has gone to Heaven.'"

And here, out of a chapter of "Personal Reminiscences of Mr. Lowell," is an anecdote about Thackeray which may be as new to our readers as it is to the writer of this notice :—

"He told me that Thackeray had asked him once for his candid opinion of the novel, Henry Esmond,' begging him to point out any mistake he might detect in the English of the reign of Queen Anne. Mr. Lowell answered that there was one thing he thought wrong ; did anybody then ever use the phrase, different to' such a thing ? Hang it all ! ' cried Thackeray. No; of course they didn't.' "

In speaking of a volume that is made up of some sixty or seventy short pieces, it is impossible to do much more than indicate the general character of the contents ; and our extracts have therefore been chosen rather as illustrating manner and aperp, than as a guide to the best articles. It is from this point of view that we take for our last example a passage from the fragments put together near the end of the volume under the heading of "Second Thoughts," which inculcates an attitude towards class distinctions and the manner of speaking of them, that is observed throughout the book with very pleasant results :—

"A lady who was having her house in London painted, over- heard two workmen talking. They were speaking of the arrogsnt manner in which they and their class were often treated. Why,' said one, they actually call us the lower classes.' I repeated this story to an eminent scholar, who is also a leader and teacher of men. He was silent for a moment, and then said he had a piece of advice to offer, the outcome of his experience. " ' Never use words that imply class distinctions.' Such words as 'flunkey,' little people '—by which elegant phrase is meant, I believe, people living on small means in little houses—' counterjutupers,' and so on, always seem to me to betray vulgarity in those that use these terms." Nothing is so cheap as contempt. There are people who can never speak of a labourer but as Hodge,' or of a farm-lad but as a lout. I cannot believe that by doing so they either raise their own dignity or lower the dignity of those of whom they speak. We are constantly bearing how foolish it is for people to be ashamed of the class to which they belong, or of the labour by which they earn bread. But as long as we use contemptuous and derogatory terms to denote these, there is surely some excuse for their mistaken shame."

In our day, when "truth to life" has come to mean microscopic study of morbid developments of existence in the slums, one lays oneself open to a suspicion of antique vulgarity and singular stupidity, if one hints that there can be any possible advantage to a man or woman of letters in being born in what we must—for the sake of being explicit—call the higher -classes. The day is past when it was the right thing to adulate "titled authors" with frank snobbishness. Neverthe-

less, " class " is a fact of life to-day quite as much as it was yesterday, whatever it may be going to be to-morrow. And among many reasons that we find for liking this little volume of miscellanies, is that it furnishes one more illustration of a theory we hold by obstinately, that aristocracies, in spite of many sins and follies they have to answer for, are still—in free and civilised countries—the best schools for the best type of womanly character and culture. There is probably no kind of human being to whom there comes quite naturally so wide and familiar a knowledge of all the normal varieties of circum- stance and character, as to an English lady born to the tradition of a "great family," and living simply the life of her caste with its rich opportunities of contact with all that is most interesting in public affairs and its wholesome ties of affection and duty, linking it with friends, relatives, and dependents in every humbler grade of circumstance. And where these opportunities fall to those who know how to use them, not only in life but in literature, the result is particularly happy. We only wish these stories and sketches had been introduced by a short prefatory memoir. The charm of the book is so personal, that it justifies the desire to know something of the personality of the author.