RECENT NOVELS.*
Miss FORBES-ROBERTSON essays to give us in The Potentate a full-length portrait of one of the despots of the late Italian Renaissance who combined culture with cruelty in equal degrees, who was " titillated voluptuously," to use Judge Jeffreys's phrase, by the tortures of prisoners, yet was pro- foundly versed in humanistic studies; who was grotesque in appearance—with an artificially whitened face, extra- ordinarily scarlet lips, and thick yellow hair, reminding us somewhat of the Jamblies in Mr. Lear's poem—yet excited an irresistible fascination over beautiful and refined women. The love interest is supplied by the attachment of the hero, whose father has been executed by the Duke, for the daughter of the Duke's former adviser whom the hero has himself assassinated. He is not aware of the fact until late in the story, and betrays himself to be no true son of the Renaissance by expressing horror on learning the truth. It is unnecessary to set forth the other attrac- tions—or repulsions—of the plot, which, after all, is but a pale and attenuated imitation of the true stories of the Age of the Despots, a collection of which the late Mr. Symonds made in the last volume but one of his history of the Renaissance. Miss Forbes-Robertson writes cleverly, though rather wildly, with an insight into the spirit of the time which is rather intuitive than the result of profound study. For what else can any one with a smattering of either scholarship or Italian think of a writer who assigns to a sixteenth-century Italian noble the name of Everard Val Dernement—his friends call him Val !—who gives the female characters—all Italians—the names of Gwelma, Eldis, Pilar, Geraldine ; who styles the cleric an Abbe ; who talks of a baretta instead of a biretta, of an " idealer love," —who, in a word, relying on her ability to suggest an " atmosphere," exhibits a sovereign disregard for such trifles as historical accuracy, correct nomenclature, grammar, and even spelling P Mr. Christie Murray's new novel, A Race for Millions, may best be regarded merely in the light of a thrilling tale of mystery, telling how some accomplished scoundrels got hold of the clue to the whereabouts of an amazing cache of gold in the Yukon district, and were ultimately baffled by the dogged pertinacity of an English detective and the unexpected courage of the daughter of the scoundrels' dupe. Sentimen- talists, on the other hand, will not fail to discover that con- currently with the development of the story may be traced the gradual growth of the tender passion in the detective's heart, while any reader with a Renee of humour must appreciate the diverting manner in which Mr. Christie Murray illustrates the conflicts between professional etiquette and humanity which keep arising in the bosom of In- spector Prickett. The Inspector is a capital fellow, and the true grit he displays on falling into the hands of his foes — who are, again, most impressive villains — enlists our warmest sympathies. We are free to confess, however, that the transformation of Miss Harcourt from a nervous lodging- house keeper into a heroine who is prepared to go anywhere and do anything is too abrupt to be altogether plausible, while the episode of her travestissement as a mulatto boy borders on the grotesque. Still, the story is told with all Mr. Murray's energy and geniality, and our own chief cause of complaint against it is its brevity. We may ask, in con- elusion, how comes it that the railway-cars are spoken of as rolling east on their way to the Yukon P Mr. West's novel, if not epoch-making, has at least the merit of being at once opportune, topical, and entertaining. Pelican House is a satirical extravaganza aimed at the " wild- cat" schemes of modern finance. It relates how a number of impecunious individuals of half-a-dozen nationalities combined, dissolved, and recombined, in successive associations, at first social and then speculative, with varying fortunes, but ulti- mate success. The plan of the work is severely simple, being merely an account of the meetings of the Board of Directors, and the business transacted at each meeting. There is no • (1.) The Potentate. By Frances Ferbea-Robertson. London : Archibald Constable and Co.-12.) A Race for Millions. By Hasid Christie Murray. London : Chatto and Windt:m—(3 ) Pelican House. By B. B. West. London T. Fisher Unwin.—(4.) The Londoners : an Absurdity. By Robert S. Hichens. London; W. Heinemann.—(5.) The Mermaid of Intish.IIig By R. W. 1‘... Edwards. London : Edward Arnold.—'6.) A Soldier of Manhattan. By Joseph A. Altaheler. London : Smith, Elder, and Clo.--;7.) A Woman in Grey. By Mrs. C. N. Williamson. London: George Rontledge and Soma.— (S.) Young Blood. By E. W. Hornung. London : Cassell and Co.
hero, no love interest, and feminine readers may probably be repelled by preliminary and episodical technicalities. Once, however, the Honi Solt Qui Mal Y Pense Syndicate is launched on its final phase as a Society for the helping of financial lame dogs over stiles, the fun becomes fast and furious. Mr. West adds to a riotously extravagant imagination a genius for circumstantial detail which is never at a loss. The stories told by the applicants for financial assistance would furnish forth the plots of a dozen excellent farces : to take one instance, the request of the high-spirited young Irish lady for funds to effect her own abduction is funny in itself, and the fun is immensely enhanced by the sequel, when it transpires that the loan is employed to abduct her timorous suitor. It may be objected that the point of Mr. West's satire is blunted by the extravagance of his illustrations, but to any one who can read between the lines the moral of the book is as sound as the humour is exhilarating.
Riotous extravagance is also the keynote of Mr. Hichens's 4‘ absurdity," as he calls it, The Londoners, though here the
satirical aim is less apparent, and the foibles of smart society are substituted for the enterprise of financial sharks. The central figure is a pretty widow, satiated with the pomps and vanities of Mayfair, whose great desire is to get out of society.
On her descends like a bolt from the blue an American schoolfellow dying to get into it. The American girl sweeps her friend back into the vortex, complicating matters by masquerading in male attire as her own husband, who has divorced her on a charge of which she is guiltless, but indignantly refused to defend. The English widow submits to be compromised by the apparent attentions of the American as a means of effecting her aim, and the story resolves itself into a comedy of errors enacted during the Ascot week in the country house of a millionaire con- fectioner, known as the Bun Emperor, rented for the occasion by the widow. Treated in the frankly indecorous _manner of a Palais Royal farce, such a plot might have been -worked out with amusing if unedifying results. To Mr. Hichens's credit, it must be admitted that his " absurdity " is void of offence. He skims adroitly over the thin ice of the situation. Some of the characters are cleverly drawn, and the dialogue is ingenious and allusive. Mr. Hichens, in short, has laid himself out to be screamingly funny, but his note is so consistently forced that we have found ourselves depressed and fatigued instead of being diverted and exhilarated. We can only compare the perusal of The Londoners to the afflicting experience of witnessing a comedy in which the actors work desperately hard, but their loudest sallies are received in stony silence.
Mr. Edwards's book, The Mermaid of Inish-ITig, is difficult to classify, lying as it does entirely outside the beaten track trodden by the modern novelist, and dealing neither in introspection, sex-problems, and squalor on the one hand, nor in chivalry, sword-play, and adventure on the other. It reads very much like a transcript from the actual experience of a man of leisure, who, coming across a puzzling instance of belief in the supernatural, set about unravelling the problem, and partly by good luck, but more by patience and pertinacity, gradually succeeded in following up the scattered clues until he had plucked the heart out of the mystery. To put the matter baldly, the story is that of the betrayal and desertion of an orphan peasant girl, who, banned by her neighbours, brings up the child of her shame in a seals' cave. The child, already amphibious, is cut off from her mother by a fall of rock, which chokes up the perilous passage to the cave, and lives with the seals until, mistaken for one of them by an islander, she falls a victim to his gun. Mr. Edwards's method is somewhat desultory, but he is a thorough artist in stimulating the curiosity of his readers. He has a vivid appreciation of the peculiarities of the island folk, a keen eye for the beauty of the Donegal coast scenery, and a quiet but genuine sense of humour, which reveals itself in the minutely circumstantial narrative given in the diary of the lighthouse- keeper, the dupe of " Black Kate's " betrayer. The realistic invention displayed in this strange document is very remark- able. Altogether this is a book of singular freshness and originality.
A Soldier of Manhattan illustrates with candour and im- partiality that brief period during which the British and Americans were brothers-in-arms against the French. Against a historical background, in which due prominence is assigned
to the heroic figures of Montcalm and Wolfe, Mr. Altsheler sets before us a stirring tale of love and war narrated by a young New York officer who is taken prisoner at Ticonderoga, escapes from Quebec, and ultimately takes part in the storm- ing of the Heights of Abraham. Lieutenant Edward Charteris is a good specimen of the fighting hero of romance, gallant, impressionable, indiscreet, and, on the whole, very well pleased with himself,—a type familiar to the readers of Lever's novels. It was only natural that he should fall in love with the daughter of the French seigneur, whom he had met before the outbreak of hostilities, and in whose house he is subsequently detained as a prisoner of war. Their courtship is chequered, for the Lieutenant has a dangerous and un- scrupulous rival in Savaignan, the French spy, but by the aid of the humonrist and good genius of the plot, Zeb Crane, a. grotesque rustic of amazing shrewdness, endurance, and skill as a marksman and scout, he is rescued from captivity,
releases the heroine from the unwelcome attentions of Savaignan, and achieves his heart's desire with the consent of the old seigneur. Mr. Altsheler writes in a brisk, straight- forward style eminently suited to the character of the narra- tor, the historical personages are boldly sketched, and the battle pictures full of life and movement.
The clever author of The Barn-Siormers, that lively romance of theatrical life noticed a few months back in these columns, challenges comparisons with Wilkie Collins by the title of her new novel, A Woman in Grey, and carries the challenge several steps further in the con- tents of the most extravagantly sensational novel that- we have ever encountered. The heroine has a triple alias to begin with, but that is only her slightest claim to consideration. For Floria Amory, the long-lost daughter of a virtuous Baronet, having been convicted of the murder of an old woman with whom she lived, sentenced to death and subsequently, after a reprieve, to penal servitude to life, is buried alive—under the influence of a mysterious drug—rescued by friendly body - snatchers, and conveyed to Paris, where a ghoulish savant subjects her to a miraculous treatment which entirely alters her physique. She then enters on a new career as the brilliant novelist, Con- suelo Hope, or the Amber Witch, throws herself in the way of her father, who is wholly unaware of her identity, but over whom she establishes an overpowering influence, and capti- vates an eligible cousin. This young gentleman's fiancee• pursues the Amber Witch with relentless hatred, shuts her up in a gun-room with an escaped tiger, and subsequently, with the aid of the real murderer of the old woman, fastens on her not one, but two, diabolical charges of assassination. These, however, are only a tithe of the horrors and mysteries of this astounding and preposterous story. Mrs. Williamson intro duces us to a weird farmhouse, whose owner keeps an idiot in chains and employs his leisure in breeding gigantic spiders.. There is no relief in the breathless and kaleidoscopic proces- sion of horror, sensation, and crime. Mrs. Williamson has certainly established a "record" in romance of this sort, but she has done so by dint of such outrageous agony-piling as to exhaust the credulity of the most guileless and gullible reader.. And as she has shown herself to be the possessor of a sense of humour in her earlier books, we are almost driven to the conclusion that her present venture is an extremely elaborate practical joke.
Mr. Hornung's capital story, Young Blood, hardly main- tains the level of its highly dramatis opening scene, in which the happy-go-lucky son of a prosperous manu- facturer, returning from a long health trip to South Africa without notice of his arrival, finds his father's country house shut up and deserted, discovers unmis- takable evidence of a recent sale, and to crown all, learns from the month of a stranger that his father is ruined and has fled the country on a charge of swindling his creditors. How Harry Ringrose, sobered by calamity, and hoping against hope in his father's innocence, set to work to make a livelihood and a home for his mother ; how, after countless• rebuffs, he was fain to turn usher in a dame school, and finally, abandoning gerund-grinding for literary hack.work, he managed to earn a modest competence,—all this is told in Mr. Hornung's brightest and most engaging manner. The schoolmastering episode, in which a prominent role is *- signed to a ferocious pedagogue of the Squeers type, ia. mirably told, and there is a very elaborate and entertaining portrait of a good-natured but unprincipled Bohemian, in the gradual revelation of whose strangely mixed character Mr. Hornung shows no little skill and subtlety. His daughter makes a charming heroine, but the contrast that she presents to her father and his surroundings violates the laws of heredity as well as the ordinary canons of probability.
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