RECENT NOVELS.*
SIR HENRY CUNNINGHAM is to be warmly congratulated on The Heriots, which is, so far, the most brilliant novel of the year ; a book of which it can be said—and higher praise of the kind it would be difficult to give—that it will not disappoint even the readers who retain the most distinct recollections of The Cceruleans and Chronicles of Dustypore. There are, how- ever, brilliant novels the brilliance of which irritates quite as much as it fascinates, because it gives one the impression that the books exist for the sake of the bons-mots which are scattered over their pages with reckless indiscriminateness ; that in them everything is sacrificed to the making of epigrammatic points ; that they are examples of the meretricious literary architecture which constructs ornament instead of ornamenting- construction. No such impression as this is left by The Heriots. It is a book which is full of good things, but which does not depend upon its good things for its goodness, though they may and do add to the enjoyable qualities which exist inde-
pendently of them. Sir Henry Cunningham's felicities of phrasing resemble rightly chosen and judiciously used condi-
ments, which have a flavour of their own, but perform their true service in bringing out for the palate a more delicate- flavour in the dish which they accompany. A " fine passage " is only fine in the true sense when it loses something by isolation ; when good as an elegant extract, it is still im- measurably better as part of a whole. How well put is the following, spoken by the author in his own proper person, it propos of Mrs. Araby's vulgar pleasantry, "There is no more effectual estrangement than a difference of taste in jokes ; " nor is he less happy in his reference to the heroine's com- panions at one stage of her career as people who were apt to- " look on death but as one degrading incident in an existence made up of degradations," or in his description of some of Olivia's relatives as "kinsmen whose scant courtesy to her father had sometimes justified the cynical view that the chief use of relationship is to give poignancy to unkindness." These are Sir Henry Cunningham's own "asides," which we never want to skip, as we want to skip most chorus-passages in novels, and his people talk as well as he talks him-. self. How many of us have felt with Olivia that " a nice book, like solitude, is all the nicer for some one- to whom one can say how nice it is ;" have observed with Mr. Cosmo's perceptions, though not with his cynical indifference, that "nowadays girls rush in where mothers fear- to tread ;" or have had moments in which we could sympathise with Dr. Crucible's complaint : " It is so hard that the young should have all the good things—beauty, innocence, and enthusiasm, and the rest—just at the time when they can best afford to do without them. The order of events should be reversed if I had my way." These things are good any-. where, but they are best in the pages of The Harlots, and the• writer's bons-mots have not merely the positive merit of rele- vance, but the negative merit of freedom from extravagance._ It is easy to give point to paradox : the rare gift is that of being, • (1.) The Heriote. By Sir Henry Stewart Cunningham, K.0 I.E. 3 vole. London : Macmillan and Co.—(2.) The Duke's Daughter,and The Fugitives. By - Mrs. Oliphant. 3 vols. Edinburgh and London : W. Blackwood and Sons.—
(3.) Acte. By Hugh Westbury. 3 vole. London :'Itiebard Bentley and Son.— (4.) Lady Faint-Heart. By H. B. Marriott Watson. 3 vols. London : Chapman. and Hall.—(5.) In Her Earliest Youth. By "Teams." 3 vols. London Kogan Paul, Trench, TrUbner, and Co.–'.(6.) The Conspirators. By Count Paul P—. Edited by Frank Barkut. 2 vols. London : Sampson Low and Co.
able to give as much point as there is in any paradox to some reflection which has the obvious and therefore uninteresting truth of plain common-sense. This is the gift possessed in large measure by Sir Henry Cunningham, and it serves to confer additional attractiveness upon a novel which is a good deal more than a collection of successful examples of the art of putting things. With the Heriots themselves, the author has been specially successful ; he has managed to individualise them, and yet to preserve a recognisable family likeness. But though they give the novel a centre and a title, they are really subsidiary in interest to the men and women who form the world of Mrs. Valentine Heriot,—the world whose intoxicating atmosphere deprives poor Olivia for a time of true possession of herself, and subdues her to the spells of the sparkling, shallow, loose- principled, yet not ungenerous Claude de Renzi. De Renzi himself is a great triumph. Superficially be resembles some of Lord Beaconsfield's favourite heroes, but he has more flesh and blood than any of them. He lives for us, while they only pose for us ; we feel his personality as we never feel that of Coningsby or Tancred or Lothair. We do not think this such high praise as it may seem to some of our readers ; but how- ever this may be, it is just and truthful praise, and De Renzi is not a mere solitary success, but simply the most striking portrait in a gallery where no single figure is devoid of interest or charm. The Heriots is, in short, a book to be read, and it is impossible to imagine its being read without admira- tion.
Mrs. Oliphant's wonderful versatility has often been made the subject of remark in these columns, and it is, indeed, so obvious as to make remark almost unnecessary ; but never More has it been exhibited in a single book in the way in which it is exhibited in The Duke's Daughter, and The Fugitives. Of course the two tales are separate works, and bad they been published separately, each would have been read and appraised without reference to the other ; but the fact of their being brought out together—though the juxtaposition may be a mere publisher's arrangement—compels the critic, and even the ordinary hasty reader, to realise the extent of Mrs. Oliphant's imaginative and literary range as he has never perhaps realised it before. When, on beginning the first of the stories, we find ourselves introduced to the family of a social potentate who bears the gratuitously impossible title of Dake of Billingsgate, we know exactly the kind of thing that the author has prepared for our delectation, and our prevision is justified by the event. " The Duke's Daughter," or rather the Duke himself—in whom and for -whom the story exists—is a study in a manner which very strongly resembles the manner of Anthony Trollope as it is seen in those passages in his books—of which the interview between Bishop Proudie and Bertie Stanhope is a delicious example—where he shows some tendency to break away from the restraints of pure comedy, and to let himself go in the direction of farce. Neither in his novels nor in this story of Mrs. Oliphant's is the abandonment complete ; the situation is never allowed to lose all touch of the actual and to become purely farcical ; but there is just sufficient strengthening of the lines and sharpening of the angles to produce a fuller and broader effect of humour than is usual with either writer. Mrs. Oliphant has followed an example frequently set by her sometime contemporary, by choosing as
a, theme the extraordinary effect produced by a ruling passion, which is almost monomania, upon a person who is, apart from this passion, decidedly commonplace, not to say stupid. The Duke of Billingsgate is just such a person ; he is a man who might be implicitly relied upon to be consistently uninteresting ; and yet he manages to make himself the observed of all observers, and the talked-of among all talkers, by that outbreak of his insane pride of rank, in the course of which he drags his daughter of twenty-seven from the very altar, and then locks her up for two months, in order to prevent her marrying a man who in birth, wealth, and character is obviously equal to her. Mrs. Oliphant softens down the inherent incredibilities of the situation with great skill, and even proves her command of that sympathetic touch which brings out the element of pathos underlying
the poor Duke's fantastic stupidity. The story is admirable .of its kind, but the kind to which " The Fugitives " belongs
is the more generally popular because it treats of and appeals to familiar emotions. The midnight flight of the dishonest financier from his luxurious English home with his two daughters—the young woman and the little child, neither of whom can even guess at the meaning of the mysterious journey—provides a striking opening for a story the continua- tion and close of which amply fulfil the promise of these early pages. The life of the little French village of Latour, which the fugitives make their final resting-place, and in which poor Mr. Goulborn finds not only his grave but the opportunity for the one kind deed which makes that grave sacred to Blanchette and her husband, is portrayed with intimate knowledge and fine sympathy; and though Mrs. Oliphant has done more ambitious work than this story of the ordeal of Helen Goulborn, she has never excelled its quiet, tender pathos.
This has indeed been a merry, merry month of May for novel- readers and novel-reviewers. Most persons of experience will
agree that one really good novel per mensem is a very good—
perhaps, indeed, too liberal—average to allow as an estimate of the regular output of fiction ; but this month we have had, not one good novel, but three. Of two we have already spoken ; and Mr. Hugh Westbury's Acte is an admirable third, which is none the less welcome for being entirely different in subject and treatment from the books of Sir Henry Cunning- ham and Mrs. Oliphant. From the fact that the name of Nero's Greek mistress appears on the title-page, the educated reader will infer that Mr. Westbury's book is a romance of life in ancient Rome, and it is more than possible that the inference may not prove attractive, for stories of classical times, though they often possess respectable virtues, are apt to combine them with the respectable vice of decorous dullnesr. It is, therefore, well to say at the outset that Acte is a story which is, from its first page to its last, intensely in- teresting, with that simple interest of character and situation which appeals to the most undiscriminating of Mr. Mudie's customers, as well as with that finer interest which is aroused by striking conceptions, finished workmanship, and a vividly faithful reproduction of the life of a bygone day. Acts is not merely picturesque and panoramic after the fashion of its kind, but is what Americans call a " live" book : its characters are not merely recognisable as Romans, or Greeks, or Jews by costume or custom, but are in the first place and pre-eminently flesh-and-blood men and women. Best of all this vitality is attained without any of that anachronism of vital portraiture which it is much more difficult to avoid than mere anachronism in external accessories. Nero, Seneca, and Titus, Acte, Judith, Paulina, and Poppcea, do not make con- cessions to the nineteenth century to win the sympathetic interest of nineteenth-century readers ; they belong to the first century, and are never allowed to forget their place, or rather their time. In this respect, Acte compares favourably even with such deservedly admired predecessors as Hypatia and The Last Days of Pompeii ; and Mr. Westbury deserves all praise for having, without any sacrifice of artistic truthfulness, attained the very kind of interest which such sacrifice is intended to secure. This becomes very manifest in his treatment of the tradition which attributes to St. Paul the conversion of Acte. As a whole, Mr. Westbury's presentation of the great apostle is somewhat wanting in impressiveness ; but there is a singularly subtle truth in his description of the manner in which, through St. Paul's teaching, Acte slowly realises the Christian concep- tion of sin,—a conception entirely alien to the nature of a Greek of the first century, especially to a Greek of Acte's training and antecedents. Acte, however, though she gives the book its title, is really a subordinate figure ; and the author's most notable work is put into the portrait of Seneca, certainly one of the most masterly of recent examples of the fictitious treatment of a familiar historical personage. In lifelike presentation of a somewhat complex character, Mr. Westbury's imaginative workmanship is even more solid than that of Archdeacon Farrar, though the chapter on Seneca in his volume, Seekers after God, has always seemed to the present writer one of his happiest efforts. Indeed, Mr. Westbury's characters all round are admirably conceived and effectively grouped, while his vigorous and picturesque treatment of action is calculated to win for his book the wide popularity which a classical romance very seldom achieves.
From the author of that curious story, Marahuna, one expects a clever book, and there is certainly no want of clever- ness in Lady Faint-Heart; but, in spite of its ability, it is a very perplexing and somewhat irritating performance. There is an introduction in the form of an allegory, which makes it abundantly clear that the story is to be classed among novels with a purpose, and as we follow the career of the very earnest young lady who acts as heroine, we feel that we are on the track of some " moral;" bat the provoking thing is that the fugitive purpose never comes clearly into sight, and when we reach the end of the third volume, we are unable to identify it. Millicent Hetherdene is a freethinker and a philanthro- pist, who lives in a country village and dreams of reforming the condition of the masses in East London. She talks a great deal with a great number of people, but is not able to do anything towards the accomplishment of her large and rather ill-defined aims, save writing a pamphlet bearing the not specially attractive title, How to Think. Finally, she comes to a sudden resolve to abandon her schemes, to be mar- ried, and to live the life of the ordinary young woman who is unconscious of a mission ; but her resolution does not seem to be a result of faint-heartedness, but rather of a discovery that her life has been a series of blunders,—of mistaken esti- mates both of herself and of her allies. Millicent herself is one of several well-drawn characters, and there is good work in the book ; but the story moves far too slowly, and the long conversations about " topics" are occasionally tiresome.
One or two Australian poets have come to the front of late, and in the lady—we can hardly be mistaken about the sex—who chooses to be known as " Tasma," we have a very promising and capable Australian novelist. As a mere novel, In Her Earliest Youth cannot be said to be equal to Henry Kingsley's Geoffrey Hamlyn, which is, so far, the best existing story we have of life under the Southern Cross ; but " Tasma's" knowledge of her theme has the look of being more intimate and minute than was that of Kingsley, and she has delicate nuances of delineation which are in their way not lees attractive than the picturesque vigour of his broader handling. There is plenty of variety in the book, for we are introduced to all grades of Australian society; but the centre of interest throughout is Pauline Vyner, the bright, fasci- nating, half-French, half-English girl, who in the end makes the best of a somewhat unsatisfying life, after a very narrow escape from making the worst of it. There is plenty of genuine humour, not without touches of equally genuine pathos, in the story of the courtship and marriage of the rough young Melbourne racing-man, who has followed the dainty, intellectual Pauline with a doglike fidelity for years, and who, when accident put him into possession of the prize, will not let it go. Indeed, the whole character of George and his relations with the girl, who marries him with the full consciousness that he and she have not an idea or a taste in common, are depicted with a remarkable subtlety of observa- tion and handling ; and in dealing with that very different person, Sir Francis Segrave, the fascinating tempter, " Tasma " is equally at home. Whether considered as a story, or as a picture of life at the Antipodes, In Her Earliest Youth is a capital book.
The Conspirators is a very lively, and even exciting romance, which, however, is not improved by the rather silly intro- duction, which will not deceive even the most feeble-minded and credulous reader. The author adopts the stale device of pretending that he is not the author, but only the editor of the book, and that the story told in it is not a work of fiction, but a narrative of the actual experiences of a Russian nobleman of the revolutionary party now resident in England. The fictitious character of the book is, however, almost aggressively obvious, to say nothing of the little fact that, as Count Paul P— confesses to having been concerned in what is legally, if not morally, a murder, his "editor," by concealing his identity, makes himself an acces- sory. But, of course, the editing story is all fudge, and Mr. Frank Harkut may be congratulated on the fertility of invention and the literary skill which have enabled him to produce a story of conspiracies and conspirators which, when once entered upon, is not likely to be speedily laid down. Though the pretensions of the introduction cannot be accepted, it is probable that the author has had access to some first- hand information, as here and there we come across an inci- dent which has a look of reality ; and, indeed, the book as a whole leaves behind it an impression that it has been written by some one who is not wholly dependent upon uninstructed invention. It may be added that the author, though he sympathises with conspirators, does not give us the idea that conspiracy is a morally bracing vocation.
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