OWEN : A WAIF.*
THE author of this book has curiously assorted powers. It suggests to us the sort of double-flavoured fruit which a cutting from the mis- cellaneous observing genius of Mr. Dickens, grafted upon a Broad Church stock of exceedingly earnest religious conviction, might pro- duce in the literary world. The effect is a little patchy, no doubt, because each of these elements in the author's mind asserts itself in succession, rather than in the blended form of a new and original literary style. We have first a chapter of acute detail from the low life in London, such as Mr. Dickens himself might have written, and then a chapter of earnest commentary, such as we might find in a novel of Mr. Kingsley's, and the combination of the two has a some- what bizarre effect. Under the spell of earnest religious thought the extremely miscellaneous character of vulgar life becomes in a certain sense only half credible, or, at least, requires a very much subtler species of imagination than Mr. Dickens' to make it credible. Would any one fresh from Mrs. Gamp and Mrs. Prig be prepared to plunge straight into the eternal secret ? After reading of the monthly nurses, and the enormous lettuce that Mrs. Gamp had stuffed into her pocket in the sight of a wondering cab-stand, who does not feel that the step to the unseen world, the spiritual wills of men, and the incarnate Word of God, is difficult and even dizzying? There is something in the genius which photographs skilfully the vulgar mis- cellanies of life—which dwells on the natural history of the lower specimens of the species till we feel as if there were no egress out of the clotted habits which choke up the soul—that is, not, indeed, repugnant to the religious view of life, but so widely severed from it that it requires a very broad and original genius to pave the way from the one world to the other. To believe at the same moment in God and in the New Cut, Lambeth, is a great effort for mortal minds, though both are separately certainties : and the artist who completely reconciles the superficial imaginative inconsistencies of the two must be a great one. Mr. Dickens has never attempted it. In sentimental passages he pours out occasionally a little mild religion ; but it is unreal enough, and we drop it out of our memory with the rest of the sickly element in his books. In the main, all that he paints for us, whether man, creature, or thing, is superficially labelled with a unique expression of its own; and of this distinctive superficial label the faith in any true human mind is absolutely unsusceptible. You may label a canting hypocrite like "the Shepherd," but you cannot label that which by its very. essence is at the root of the mind, regulating all its inward life, instead of on the surface. The labelling imagination, if we may so speak, in which Mr. Dickens and his school are masters, is not a kind of imagination that runs easily in the same yoke with the spiritual imagination. Like the horses in Plato's Chariot of the soul, they drag against each other in different directions.
The author of Owen has this labelling imagination in a large degree, and has also—not exactly the spiritual imagination—but the wish for a spiritual imagination, and real spiritual conviction in consider- able force. Those two elements produce the effect of an ill-balanced mind, though the former alone, without the latter, would really much more imply the want of balance. Had we nothing but a picture of the surface of life we should scarcely note any deficiency; but the many efforts "to lift the painted veil, which those who live call life," make us sensible that the powers of the author do not descend nearly as deep as the exigencies of his narrative. The power of i observation in this book is great, and in the earlier part, in which the costermonger-life is delineated, it is remarkable. But all the best character-delineation is of the vivid but superficial class ; a characteristic expression or mode of expression is caught, and whenever the character reappears, that is the token by which you recognize it. Where there is no distinctive feature of this sort as in the hero himself- after lie ceases to be a predatory being—we have no distinct picture at all. The vividness of the picture de- pends entirely on an articulate catch-word to the character, a pro- minent mark that is always uppermost. For the rest, it is impos- sible not to admire the perfect local colouring in the sketches of street- life in general ; it is only when the author wants to take us into the recesses of an individual character that we are conscious of failure. How skilful is the delineation of costermonger-manners the follow- ing passage, in which Owen makes acquaintance with his best friend, will fairly show : "'What's your name?' asked Mrs. Tarby, turning to the boy. Owen.' 'Owen what ?' Owen nothing. I've got no other name.' What's your mother's name?—she had one, I suppose 1' 'Madge they called her- • Owe: a wet: By the Author of " No Church and High Church." Hurst and Blacken. that's all.' Where do you live?" Mann's Gardens, Tower-street.' What —in Lambeth?" Yes. We lived there till the rent-man turned as out, and then we came on here. Do you think mother's drowuded I don't know—God forbid, boy!" She said she would do it last week,' he re- marked, coolly. And what did she think was to become of you ?' said Mrs. Tarby. Oh, she never thinks,' was the answer, accompanied by a short laugh—"more do I. How it rains !' Ain't you hungry ?" Rather,' was the emphatic answer, and the keen black eyes looked round for some. thing more substantial than words to follow the inquiry. Tarby,' I think we'll give him the rest of that loaf,' said the woman, with a timid glance towards her lord and master. Owen glanced anxiously in that direction also ; it was a matter of importance to know what Tarby thought of the suggestion. Tarby, having harnessed the donkey, evidently stood reflect- ing on the matter. ' Times is bad !—we've parted with the old mare, and come down to donkeys, Poll ; and meat's on the rise, and we're three weeks back with the rent, and—and the damned winters coming!' And Tarby's face, pitted deep with the small-pox, took a darker and more swarthy hue. • Times is bad, Tarby,' the wife remarked; 'and perhaps half -a-twopenny- loaf would make 'em badder if we gave it all away at once. It's astonish. ing how fine we have to cut it sometimes.' This, the reader will under- stand—the reader who has not had any opportunity of studying Mrs. Tarby just at present—was polite satire, intended to touch Tarby to the quick ; for Tarby, last night, had not been full of such economic thoughts, and had consumed rather more than a gallon of beer in Jack Archer's tent, despite the objections of his better half to the proceeding. Give the boy the bread, Polly,' said Tarby, after a pause•, perhaps he is hungry, the young warmint.' Polly produced the bread, and Owen, with an uncere- monious half-snatch, proceeded to despatch it, regarding Tarby, meanwhile, with increasing interest. ' I know you!' he said at last, with an artful twinkling of one eye—'I've knowed you ever so long." Oh! have you ?' was the quiet reply; I hope you'll know your manners some day, too, and understand what thankee's for." Thankee's for the bread—I forgot !' You're welcome, boy,' said Mrs. Tarby, heartily, ' I wish there was more of it.' Oh! so do I—just,' was Owen's reply. And so you know met' said Tarby, looking down on this shrewd specimen of human nature ; where did you see me last, I wonder ?" In the station-house, last Whitsun- Monday. Oh ! wasn't you drunk!' Mrs. Tarby, who had no fine feelings, laughed at this; and Tarby's visage relaxed, as be gave a nervous twitch to a lock of straight hair behind his left ear. That's a neat memory of yourn—take care on it,' said he. He was sitting on the shaft of his barrow a moment afterwards, gathering up the reins in his hand. I wonder what you wanted in the station-house,' said Tarby, after a moment's pause ; you wasn't big enough to get drunk, and then go fighting like the holiday folks.' I got hungry, and took some cheese off a shopboard ; and the man saw me.' You'll be a credit to society when you gets bigger,' said Tarby, drily. Will you give us a ride off the Downs?' asked Owen. Bless your impudence !" I'm no weight; feel how light I am !" He is a little fellow,' commented Mrs. Tarby ; 'if our Jemmy had lived, he wouldn't have been unlike him, Tarby. Don't you see a look of little Jemmy in the eyes there?' I can't say as I do,' said Tarby, without looking for the resemblance indicated. 'Jump up, will you ?"Me cried Owen. 'Ah! just for a while ; it's hard on the new mode, though. Come up I' " Not less skilful are the first sketches of those few characters in the book which are not too important for the labelling process. Mr. John Dell with his protuberant eyes and shy abruptness,—Policeman 92, with his profound love of " unbuttonment" in moderation but not in excess—Mrs. Cherbury with her diffuse abhorrence of "fussy" people—Mr. Isaac Cherbury with his hypochondriac feelings and busmess habits waiting with his watch in his hand till he has rested the hour enjoined by his physician, though eager to get back to his work—the vain, restless Mr. Glindon with his habit of running his hand through his hair—and Oweu's slatternly mother with her chronic intention of drowning herself bodily, which she fulfils only in the moral way by inebriation,—and Mary Chickway, in childhood at least, with her profound devotion to her "gardy," are all exceed- ingly graphic pictures; but you never get much beyond the first cha- racteristic touch.
Hence the transition from these graphic but exceedingly one-sided outlines of character to passages like the following is abrupt and in- artistic ; we seem to pass at one bound over the "whole diameter of being," from the highest surface of the apparent to the depths of human nature without passing through any intermediate regions of the human heart or intellect :
" The good at the bottom of every one's heart had been evinced that day, escaping from the murky depths to God's daylight ; but the depths were there still, and the ascent was steep. Owen would trust to himself and his strong will ; he would not believe in God's power to work a change, till the change had been worked by his own hand. He had no confidence in religion aiding him in the great, difficult task of reforming one who had sinned before he was born, and fallen deeper, deeper, with,every year of his after-life. He would be religious presently—for then he would be grateful ; forgetting that for all the past gifts he had evinced but little gratitude, and thinking not how -he had turned and grown callous under trials which, in comparison with those lying beyond, were only snow-flakes in the sunshine."
This, then, is the only objection we have to make to the story before us—that while it is very graphic and clever on the surface, and also veracious and noble in its deepest tones, there is no mediat- ing imagination which softens the passage from the one to the other— nothing of that finely graduated power which, for example, in "Adam Bede" takes us from the pinnacle of accidental and fleeting social phenomena down to the depths of the ocean of Being without any abruptness, making us feel the transitions as natural and neces- sary as either extreme. With this warning that there is something of inartistic discord between the two principal fields of our author's effort as a novelist we may recommend Owen cordially as a book of high purpose and considerably more than common talent to our readers.
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