AT ODDS.* THE Baroness Tautphceus properly belongs to a rather
past away school of novelists, which she has refreshed and revived for us by variations derived from her large experience of Continental society,—we mean the school which (whether involuntarily or didactically) sets forth a delicate and refined prudence as the basis of social life, and endeavours to measure characters and careers with reference to that standard. Without, of course, the genius of Miss Austen, without the priggishness, but not, perhaps, always the equal in intellectual vivacity, of Miss Edgeworth, the authoress of "The Initials "and "Quits " constantly reminds us of that playful, secular school of fiction, so little now in vogue, which believed in the divinity of Good Sense, accepted without question the conventional morality, and found its stimulus less in warmth of feeling than in the keen edge of occasional repartee, and the sharp contrasts of the different schools of manners in different classes of life or different national characters. The proprieties are very different, of course, in the South German society, to which the Baroness Tautphceus is accustomed, from those which were acknowledged more than fifty years ago by English and Irish authoresses,—but they predominate in exactly the same way in the imagination of the writer, and give the same kind of advantages and disadvantages to her pictures.
And in many respects the refined conventional prudence which lies at the foundation of these pictures of life, has an artistic advantage over its deeper modern substitutes, mainly on the very ground that, being constitutionally quieter in temperament, it leaves room for a broader and more vigilant study of external life. Of course, where, as in Miss Edgeworth, Decorum takes almost a prophetic attitude, and insists on proclaiming its tedious gospel to the world, much of this advantage is lost. But apart from this extravagance of the prudential school of manners, there is some gain to the range of literary portraiture in the sober tone of mind which judges everything by a standard too little elevated to admit of any contemptuous neglects or any acts of intellectual obeisance. We are generally sure to get a wider reach of experience and, so far as they go, a more trustworthy account of social characteristics, from those who sketch society by its own standard, than from those who probe the grounds of con- ventional morality at the moment they are painting its results.
At Odds is not a very good specimen of this school of novel, and is written with less vivacity than the same authoress's previous efforts. The sober tone of the characters delineated is curiously contrasted with the unnaturalness and extravagance of the leading idea of the plot. The conduct of Frank O'More is in- credible; the apathetic way in which it is viewed by the other persons concerned is still more incredible ; and one is amazed that the mind which created the feminine characters could have had the audacity to conceive so unusual a "basis of operations for minds so conventional. Indeed, the individual outlines of the various characters are occasionally scarcely distinguishable from the block of average good sense out of which they are all cut in a kind of bas-relief. Not that they are not distinctly enough imagined ; but the dialogue in which they are intended to disclose themselves is so overlaid and even overridden by dun- coloured common sense, that the various personalities lose their specific expression beneath that semi-opaque superficies.
Indeed,the style in which the Baroness Tautphceus excels should contain rather more description of character and rather less mere dialogue than is to be found in this tale. You need a very delicate dramatic power indeed to supersede the use of that great instru- ment which the novelist reserves to himself, but which the drama- tist does not possess—the power of describing directly what you intend your character to be,—a power which may often be used with great effect in helping the reader to discern shades of mean- ing that would not otherwise be visible. The authoress of At Odds does not use this instrument nearly as much as she might and should. She relies too much on her dialogue, and yet her dialogue is tame. The purely imaginative part of the story, though it is full- of storm, contest, rivalry, and defeated hope, reminds us of a Dutch sea piece, with its phlegmatic waves looking as if they were raised on the surface of an enlarged
* It Odds. A nosel. By the Barone= Tautphoms. Two vole. Bentley.
canal, and their white foam more like cream, with a tingi of chocolate, than the dangerous and angry ocean breake Partly this is due to intrinsic tameness in the dialogue, the cal caused by a liberal outpouring of the oil of common sense over the troubles of this angry life,—but much, also, to the want of descriptiou which may supplement the dialogue, and give some glimpse of the agitated world beneath the calm outside of prudent cultivated women. Doris, for instance, the lively, affectionate, glory-loving Irish girl, whose passion is meant to be real, though little more than a concentrated form of affection, seems even unnaturally calm and conventional without being intended so to be, owing to the needless frugality with which the authoress uses the power of giving us a direct glimpse into her mind. Even Hilda, the passionate, spirited, jealous little "married maid," seems tame in her demeanour, and even obtusely insensible of her injuries, owing to the dead level of the somewhat wooden dialogue within which the delineation of her character is confined. Now and then we see that it is not so,—but a better artst would have kept up the vision of the smoulder- ing fire beneath, by interspersing description with conversation.
There is another considerable defect in the book. The external framework of incident is taken from the straggling, discontinuous Austrian wars of Napoleon, and is painted with much skill. But the characters for which this exciting scenery is the stage are not very well adapted to it. Except, perhaps, the Irish hero, Frank O'More, who is but an imperfect sketch, the characters are peace characters on a theatre of war, and are in no way accommodated to the electric atmosphere they breathe. It may be perhaps said that the effect of long wars is to indurate society, so that there is little perceptible difference between its moral sur- face in tirns of peace and in time of war. No doubt much of the awe and novelty of emotion caused by great national peril and calamity wears off' very quickly,—but, for all that, the feverish- ness remains,—the attitude of expectancy and of impatience—the general selfishness caused by habitual fear on the one hand,— the occasional heroism of habitual self-sacrifice on the other. Now, the principal characters of this book have none of this tint and tone about them. They are what the sheep in Land- seer's picture of "Peace" would be, if they were transferred into the centre of his dreary battle-field. They are not hardened in the way in which people who live on a field of peril become at last hardened, but they are really the tranquil characters of a leisurely generation mechanically shifted to a vacant space in the scenery of an intermittent earthquake. Hilda, intended to be a character of the ardent kind, lives serenely for years at a great distance from the husband who may almost at any time be liable to wounds and death, and never seems to trouble her mind very much on the subject of his perils. The truth is, it is painfully evident throughout that the framework of incident is not fitted to the characters which move through it,—that the historic scenery has been imagined well, and the actors in it imagined respectably, —but that the latter were not imagined for the former, nor the former with the latter. The rapids of the Napoleonic war are distinctly conceived, but the beings who navi- gate them are transplanted from the quiet generation which followed it.
Still there are great merits in the book. The German Counts Sigmund and Emmeran are admirable pictures; the Director and Minna Pallersburg are slighter sketches, equally life-like,- and the two half-sisters and their mother, though, as we have said too much crusted over with Anglo-German decorum, or too intrinsically tame, correspond with their parts, and are distinctly enough conceived. Then it is always delightful to get into the Tyrol under the Baroness Tautphoaus's guidance, for it always brings back memories of blended magnificence and simplicity,— of a hearty, childlike, and statuesque peasantry, living in-scenes which fill and thrill the imagination such as no other country in Europe can yield in equal measure. At Odds is by no means equal to this clever authoress's best works ; but it will give plea- sure to many, and perhaps even delight to some.
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