A PARCEL OF NOVELS.*
PERHAPS the most striking feature in The Head of the Firm is the contrast between male weakness and female strength afforded by the two chief personages. One is a kindly, philan- thropical gentleman, never meaning to do wrong, yet doing it from sheer feebleness of character, who sinks gradually from integrity and honour to fraud and disgrace ; who, having been tempted by debt to betray a client's confidence and appropriate title-deeds to his own use, goes on making good one security by pledging another, and speculating with other people's money, until the inevitable crash of detection comes at last ; and who, through all, is so amiable and lovable that he excites pity rather than the stern reprehension rightly due to such misconduct, and retains the unfaltering loyalty of the greatest victim of his dishonesty even to the end. And aide by side with him is seen a "a daughter of the people," who meets vicissitudes of fortune with absolute fortitude and equanimity, and has strength of mind to bear alike the loss or recovery of a lover, or the sudden alteration from the position of a female costermonger to that of the owner of £6,000 a year, without losing her head or changing her nature,—which nature, by-the-bye, is as kindly, true, and simple as his. Both studies are interesting, and con- tain good and careful workmanship ; and the book is plea- sant, notwithstanding a certain pervading tendency to sadness (more or less present in all Mrs. Riddell's works), which makes it verge on, without actually attaining to. tragedy, and casts over it a shade of melancholy that is nowhere deep enough to become depressing, but is yet perceptible. The writer's realistic power is exhibited especially in a graphic sketch of a family belonging to the lower classes, living in an atmosphere of squalor, drunkenness, and quarreg, who afford the sort of subject to attract the brash of Zola. But there is a wide difference between her manner of treatment and his; for her reality is ugly, yet not positively hideous, and though repulsive, stops short of what is offensive to good taste.
If the man who, when asked to insure his life, replied that "he'd be hanged if he played at a game where he had to die to win the stakes," had read Trust Money, he would have perceived that even death does not always make the stakes a certainty at the game, and that it is by no means impossible for a chapter of accidents to occur, whereby an insurance policy is invalidated when its provisions do not extend to the whole world. For this tale relates how a gentleman, whose urgent need had induced him to appropriate £15,000 for which he was trustee, endeavoured to prevent the fraudulent transaction from ever becoming known, and provide for repayment of the money in case of his death, by insuring his life for that sum ; and how, his policy being limited to Europe, North America, and a trip to Trinidad, the skilfully contrived plan was dis- arranged by his going yachting in the Bay of Paria, being forced to land on the Venezuelan coast for a night in consequence of the yacht's running on to a mud-bank, and being killed by a -snake-bite on that coast; with the result that the insurance -company, not unnaturally, declined to pay a farthing. Under these circumstances, therefore, his defalcations would have come to light, had he not been thoughtful enough also to insure the lives of his sons, Edward and Charles, for the same amount as his own ; and had not Edward, seeing (like Brer Rabbit) that there was " bound to be some kind of accident somewheres," taken occasion to make one when out boating, by sailing away whilst Charles was bathing and leaving him to drown, so as to secure Charles's, instead of the father's,
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(1.) The Head of the Firm By Mrs. J. H. Riddell. London : Heinemann. —(2 ) Trust Money. Ry William Wagtail. London : Matto and Windom: (3J Ben Clough. By William Westall. London : Ward and Downey.—(4.) One Way of Lore. By Constance Smith. Landon : Hurst and Blaokett.—(5.) The Snare and the Foxier. By Mrs. Alexander. London : Hurst and Blaokett.
£15,000 from the insurance office,—which ingenious method of getting out of the dilemma was all the less repugnant to Edward's fraternal feelings, because he and his brother were in love with the same young lady, and Charles was the favoured suitor. All that relates to the foregoing plot is cleverly constructed and amusing, but there is a good deal in the third volume relating to the abolition of slavery in America which is tedious ; and the numerous hunting-scenes show that, however fond the author may be of this sport, he mistakes his vocation if he imagines himself to be a Surtees. We wish to observe, too, that Olive's labours on behalf of Abolition told upon her personal appearance more unfavourably than is quite compatible with her position ; for when a bright, rosy-cheeked, impulsive girl becomes trans- formed into "an elderly young woman with sunken cheeks, a sallow skin, a generally limp appearance, and a listless manner," one hardly thinks she can have been qualified to continue playing her original part of fascinating heroine. That insurance business offers a happy hunting-ground wherein to forage for material for fiction, is proved again by the same writer in Ben Clough, a collection of five short and very slight stories, of which the most important turns upon the somewhat ghoulish practice of gambling in other people's lives by insuring bad ones and paying the premiums for them, on speculation of profiting by the speedy decease of the persons insured. Both this book and Trust Money show Mr- Westall to have a wholesome sense of the necessity of sup- plying plenty of incident ; and show, also, that whilst he evidently regards sudden death either by murder or accident (preferably the former) as an almost indispensable element in a novel, he has yet no desire to harrow his reader's feelings unduly, and only brings in the tragical part as a sort of sauce piquante to the dish, not the principal ingredient of its com- position.
It is evidently likely that love-making will constitute a large amount of the contents of a book whose title is One Way of Love ; and readers who wish for a great deal of this article will find themselves accommodated to their heart's content in Miss Smith's new work ; though others, with less appetite for the commodity, may probably think there is too much of it, and get tired of the perpetual misunderstandings, miscon- ceptions, accidentally overheard conversations, and similar hackneyed devices, whereby the course of true love is pre- vented from running smooth until the end of the third volume. What the book wants is condensation ; for the bulk is out of proportion to the pith, and one's attention flags and wanders, notwithstanding the real cleverness that parte of the carefully written story possess, and notwithstanding also the genuine liking and sympathy felt for the amiable and unselfish heroine throughout the manifold trials and anxieties caused her by her sister and two brothers, and throughout the progress of her own emancipation from "the old beggarly elements," till she comes at last to realise that Chippendale furniture, stained-glass windows, rose-gardens, and picturesque landscapes are not indispensable to happiness and that she may attain it with a man she loves, even in a semi- detached house which is decorated with crude colours and big- patterned wall-papers, and looks out on the Lewisham High Road, where " trams and things " go up and down all day long. The incident of her wild chase to the Lyceum. Theatre after a young man (not her lover), to whom she wishes to hand over a cheque for £520, seems to us refreshingly original; but it was unlike her usual good sense to carry the cheque (which, by-the-bye, had been kept ready, not only written, but dated also, for six months) in an opera-glass case, instead of in a parse ; and it appears odd, too, that if she did choose the former unusual receptacle, she should not have taken the pre- caution of keeping it shut.
A novel that ought to be thrilling, and is not, is disappoint- ing; and, therefore, The Snare of the Fowler is disappointing. Given an unscrupulous, resolute woman, with an equally un- scrupulous son, whose sentiments towards the girl he loves find expression of this kind : " I could curse her ; ay ! and tor- ture her between the kisses I long to press upon that sweet mouth of hers ; " and given also as the object of his passion a well-nigh friendless and apparently destitute girl, whom he and his mother alone know to be entitled to a large fortune, which they are resolved to secure by fair means or foul, and who is in their clutches : and there we have obviously the necessary material for a creepy story of the first water. But this Mrs. Alexander's work fails to be, in consequence of the insufficiency of the bars that hold the intended victim prisoner, and that are too insignificant to have been real restraints to any person not of weak intellect—which Myra certainly was not. For instance, want of paper, stamps, and envelopes, cannot be felt as a serious obstacle to external communication when these things might have been supplied by an ally in the house, and when the gentleman to be written to was quite able to afford 2d. for an unstamped letter. And when Myra was inhabiting lodgings where the landlady wanted to help her, and must have had frequent opportunities for seeing her alone during the oppressor's absence on shopping and visiting expeditions, it seems childish to repre- sent the landlady as delivering notes surreptitiously in the oppressor's presence. The account of the escape is fairly exciting, and would have been more so but for the fact that Myra was wasting trouble and ingenuity in running away when there was no good reason why she should not have walked away whenever she pleased.
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