MISS YONGE'S NEW STORY.*
Miss YONGE has finished the " Daisy Chain," a book which, though it has not, like the "Heir of Redclyffe," reached its fourteenth edition—square fat books never reach a fourteenth edition—is perhaps the best of the many she has given to the world. Certainly no other has exhibited the peculiar merits and defeats which have produced her popularity in so complete a form. Taking an average middle-class family as her subject, Miss Yong° described the ways and the characters, the habits and the careers, the successes and the misfortunes of nine or ten boys and girls, all of one house, and all placed in one set of circumstances, with unflagging spirit and in unwearied detail. The book had no end, so there was no story, and no particular plot, so there was no excitement, no very able writing, and an endless quantity of exceedingly tiresome conversation, or, to employ the only word which expresses Miss Yonge's idea of dialogue, confab ; but there was remarkable talent in it nevertheless. From Dr. May, the clever old physician, with his old-world ideas and strong prejudices, to the spoiled child of the house, every figure was a living being, whom it was possible to discuss, and to criticize, and to dislike,—it is very difficult to like any of Miss Yonge's characters,—just as if he or she had been a living person. One knew Dr. May, and Tom, and Flora, and felt it possible that in some far away corner of the English world a high-souled, nobly-princi- pled muff like Norman might exist and be contemptible. Ethel was something better even than this, a real creation, a type of a class, and a class most people with any experience of life have occa- sionally met. The fine-hearted girl, with her enthusiasm and her blunders, her profound ignorance of the world and rooted belief in her capacity, her large aspirations and surface intolerance, her crave to be loved, and habit of treading on everybody's corns through mere truthfulness and want of tact, her trust in 4' principle " and total inability to see that liberty is a principle as much as truth- fulness, or• justice, or self-restraint, is as real as if Miss Austen had fixed her for ever in dark colours and a formal little frame. The wearisomeness of the description—and the verbatim report of an American debate is sometimes livelyin comparison—adds to the impression of the thing described, and like some of the monoton- ous refrains of popular songs fixes the tune indelibly. We do not suppose one reader in fifty ever got through the adventures of the May family, but those who did, awfully weary though they were, felt that a permanent and a pleasant addition had been made to their acquaintance. Smith the doctor next door with his wife, and his children, and his babes, and his servants, and his
• The Trial. By Miss Yonga. London and Cambridge; Macmillan.
gig, and his way of handling his whip and using the knocker was not more concrete than the household of the old Minster city.
Miss Yonge has in The Trial finished that story, and the conclusion, though somewhat unlike it, is nearly as good an the commencement. It would be quite as good, but that the authoress is out of conceit with Ethel, and has taken no pains about her. She has developed, of course, but it is into a "good" young lady of the " self-sacrificing " type, who exists for the guidance of her brothers and the worship of her father, has always her wits about her at the proper moment, and is apt to strike the reader as a highly estimable but over-restrained bore. But Dr. May's individuality is rather strengthened, and the boys and girls come out pretty much as they were, or with only that
trace of colourlessness apt to follow upon a very vigorous and prononce youth. A story has been added which young ladies
will care about, a story of a most excellent and bad-tempered young man,—since the success of absurd Sir Guy Miss Yonge has been apt to diminish the insipidity of her heroes by a volcanic temper,—who is falsly accused of murder, condemned to death, receives a commuted sentence of penal servitude for life, spends three years in prison and at Portland, and comes out with his spirit so quenched that only a sudden emergent y can arouse it.
Of course he becomes a Missionary,—what should a young lady's hero with a bad temper become when he is converted and ner- vous but a Missionary ?—the picture of his remorse for throwing a atone at a provoking brother is not a little ludicrous, but we suspect a gentleman innocently condemned to such a life would very likely come out just as Leonard Ward is described, not so goody certainly, and not quite so full of Christian forgiveness for unmerited wrong, but with just that broken and, as it were, intermittent will. It is a clever idea, and Leonard makes a good centre to all the family activities, which in the "Daisy Chain" rather wanted a pivot. The picture of his grown sister wasting away under the misery, and of the little sister wasting too, not under the misery, but under her own heated imagination of the horrors her brother must be suffering, is well drawn. Miss Yonge always introduces the facts of life which novelists forget, keeps the incomes of her heroes and heroines before you, and makes their• acts square to them, as they do everywhere out of novels, tells you about their health, and makes their conversation headachey or rheumatic accordingly, and never lets her children think and feel as only grown-up people have the self-restraint to do. Two children are mourning their mother, whose coffin has just left the house, and one of the Mays goes to console them :—
" Her father sent her at once to the nursery, where she was welcomed with a little shriek of delight, each child bounding in her small arm-chair, and pulling her down between them on the floor for convenience of double hugging, after which shewas required to go on with the doll-dress- ing. Mary could not bear to do this while the knell was vibrating on her ear, and the two coffins being borne across the threshold ; so she gathered the orphans within her embrace as she sat on the floor, and endeavoured to find out how much they understood of what was passing, and whether they had any of the right thoughts. It was rather disappointing. The little sisters had evidently been well and religiously taught, but they were too childish to dwell on thoughts of awe or grief, and the small minds were chiefly fixed upon the dolls, as the one bright spot in the dreary day. Mary yielded, and worked and answered their chatter till twilight came on, and the rival Mary came up to put them to bed."
Very thin that appears, only it was just what children would do, and what inferior artists would insist on making them a great deal too good to attempt doing. That kind of realism, which is not Dutch painting so much as careful but inartistic photography, is Miss Yonge's strength. The details are horribly tiresome sometimes, but they are always true, and people are interested in representations which are merely true, and nothing else. Nothing tires like a panorama, but if you want to see ariver which you can• not visit you must put up with panoramic length ; and people do want. There are scores of pages of dialogue in these volumes which on any one of the principles usually guiding writers or readers are insufferable, the speakers saying just the dreary, pointless things they would say if they were alive and placed in those circumstances. But when they have said them you under- stand nearly as much about them as you would if the words were uttered in your hearing on a lawn or in a dining-room. Miss Yonge has, for instance, a schoolgirl with a fine character overlaid by schoolgirlism, self-distrust, a tendency to heroics, and a devotion to womanly dress and appearance, who is in terrible distress, and has to be comforted. Imagine the sort of chapter other young lady novelists would make about that, the amount of religious sentiment they would lug in, the weary sense of falsity their work would leave behind, and then read this necessarily long extract :—
" To Mary's surprise, the five weeks ' terrible visitation, and these last fearful five days of sleepless exertion and bereavement, had not faded the bright red of Averirs cheek, nor wore there signs of tears, though the eyes looked bloodshot. Indeed, there was a purple tint about the eye- lids and lips, a dried-up appearance, and a heated oppressed air, as if the faculties were deadened and burnt up, though her hand was cold and trembling. Her hair, still in its elaborate arrangement, hung loose, un- tidy, untouched ; her collar and sleeves were soiled and tumbled ; her dress, with its inconvenient machinery of inflation, looked wretched from its incongruity, and the stains on the huge hanging sleeves. Not a moment could have been given to the care of her own person since the sole burthen of nursing hal so grievously and suddenly descended on her. —Mary's first instinct was to poor out some warm water, and bringing it with a sponge to say, Would not this refresh yen? '—Avoril moved petulantly; but the soft warm stream was so grateful to her burning brow, that she could not resist; she put her head back, and submitted like a child to have her face bathed, saying, Thank you.'—Mary then begged to remove her tight heavy dress, and make her comfortable in her dressing-gown.—'Oh, I can't! Then I could not go back.'—' Yes, you could ; this is quite a dress ; besides, one can move so much more quietly without crinoline.'—' I didn't think of that ; ' and she stood up, and unfastened her hooks. Perhaps Dr. May would let me go back now!' as a mountain of mohair and scarlet petticoat remained on the floor, npborne by an over-grown steel mouse-trap.—' Perhaps he will by and by; but he said you must sleep first'—' Sleep—I can't sleep. There's no one but me. I couldn't sleep.'—' Then at least let me try to freshen you up. There. You don't know what good it used to do my sister Blanche for me to'brush her hair, I like it.'—And Mary obtained a dreamy soothed submission, so that she almost thought she was brush- ing her victim to sleep in her chair, before the maid came up with the viands that Dr. May had ordered.—' I can't oat that,' said Averil, with almost disgust. ' Take it away.'—' Please don't,' said Mary. Is that the way you use me, Miss Ward, when I come to drink tea with you! ' —' Oh, I beg your pardon,' was the mechanical answer.—Mary having made the long hair, glossy once more, into a huge braid, and knotted it up, came forth, and insisted that they were to be comfortable over their grilled chickens' legs. She was obliged to make her own welcome, and entertain her hostess ! and strenuously she worked, letting the dry lips imbibe a cup of tea, before she attempted the solids ; then coaxing and commanding, she gained her point, and succeeded in causing a fair amount of provisions to be swallowed ; after which Avoril seemed more inclined to linger in enjoyment of the liquids, as though the feverish restlessness were giving place to a sense of fatigue and need of repose."
Frankly, do you not recognize Mary ? Would not the scene have occurred just so, and the ability to describe every-day life "just so" is a genuine and a very scarce power. Miss Yonge has got over her besetting temptation to talk non- sense about " Church teaching" and self-discipline, as if a man could add a cubit to his mental any more than to his physical stature, and if she would give her readers a few more incidents, widen her range of characters a little, and study to pro- duce a hero who should be something differeut from an ill-tem- pered girl in a white choker and black trousers, we see not why she should not yet occupy the same shelf as Miss Austen. Higher praise it is not given to this generation to bestow, and to add a new name to the roll of true artists is surely as high an ambition as to feed growing girls with sweet but most innocent spoon meat. That is all she has done as yet, and though it is not an unworthy object to produce a book which shall sell four- teen editions, because it is so harmless that strict mothers let prim -daughters read it, and Evangelical households almost doubtwhether they might not as well read that on Sunday as talk gossip, still literature has higher terraces, and Miss Yonge may if she pleases reach them.
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