NOVELS OF THE WEEK.*
In a classification of modern works of fiction by their subject or scheme, a separate category ought certainly to be reserved for those in which the framework of the plot is furnished by a holiday journey. It may take the form of a trip within a restricted area, as in the Strange Adventures of a Phaeton, or, as in the romances of Sara Jeannette Duncan, carry us half or all the way round the globe. Of all the workers in this field of romance, the Americans have, perhaps, distinguished themselves most. One need go no further in support of this contention than the famous " tramps " of Mark Twain, or the experiences of Miss Wiggin's delightful Penelope. Mr. Howells, again, another adept in the art of romanticising the conditions of modern travel, gives us in Their- Silver Wedding Journey a delightful counterpart to his earlier work, Their Wedding Journey. Mr. Basil March, nose- s, successful but overworked magazine editor, well on in the "fifties," has been reluctantly persuaded to take a long holiday, and after a certain amount of agonising indecision on the part of his wife, sails for Europe, with Carlsbad as his objective. On the voyage, however, they become much interested in the romantic possibilities of an acquaintance between an impressionable young journalist (who is going to Europe to act as private secretary to a German-American millionaire) and a beautiful New Yorker, daughter of a cantankerous General. Mrs. March is a born match-maker of the anode type, her husband is far more interested in the young people than he cares to admit, and at their subsequent meetings — not altogether fortuitous — opportunities are afforded by the friendly elders for the development of the tender passion. Owing, however, to the prickly jealousy of the General, the friction between Burnamy (the young private secretary) and his oppressive patron, and other causes, the course of true love runs so far from smoothly as quite to spoil the latter part of Mrs. March's holiday. Happily, Mr. Howells is not enamoured of misery, and the silver-wedding journey ends in a lovers' meeting. We have been especially struck at the skill which Mr. Howells has shown in treating of the min/dice of modern travel, as they would affect a cultivated but stay-at- home couple, without fatiguing the reader or interfering with the progress of the sentimental interest. The out- look of the husband, an accomplished, fastidious, nervous, sympathetic, " tired " American, is admirably realised and maintained throughout. Last, and beet of all, Mr. Howells gives convincing proof that subtlety of analysis is compatible with an entire absence of morbidity.
• (I.) Their-Silver Wedding Journey. By W. D. Howells. London : Harper and Brothers. [6s.] --(2.) Mirry-Ann. By Norma Lorimer. London : Methuen and Co. Le5.1----(3) The World's Mercy. By Maxwell Gray. London : W. Heinemann. [S1.1--(4.) The Worshipper of the Image. By Richard L. Galllenne. London:. john Lane. [3s. 6d.)---(5.) The House of the Wizard. By M. Imlay Taylor: • London: Gay and..BIrd. [6s.)—(8.) The Money Sense. By John Strange Winter. .London : Grant Richards. [68.]—(7.) Loaves and Fishes. By Bessle.Reynolds. London : Elliot Stock. [Cs.]---(8.) Uncle Peter. By Sema Jeb. London : T Fisher nwin. [6a.].—(9.). A Maid of the Moor. By M. B. Stevenson. London : C. Arthur Pearson. (63.)=—(10.) Cinder-Path Zile,, By William Lindsey. London : Grant RIcharh. [33. Si.]
Manx fiction has come in most people's minds to be so inseparably associated with the recent exploits of Mr. Hall Caine that it is only fair to "Norma Lorimer" to acquit her of any intention to challenge comparison in .1firry-Aiirc with that enormously circulated author. The heroine, who lives with her grand-made, a rough old fisherman, is as good and clever as she is beautiful, but her grace and accomplishments only emphasise the mystery of her illegitimacy. Mirry-Ann has three suitors : the Squire, Frank Christian ; Dick Schofield, a young University man acting as tutor in the house of an Amazonian widow; and a lubberly young fisherman. Fortune favours the Squire, Mirry-Ame's grand-uncle backs the fisher- man, but her heart is given to the tutor. The choice is farther narrowed down by the momentous discovery of her mother's marriage lines, proving her to be the legitimate child of the late Squire and half-sister of Frank Christian. She is, how- ever, too generous to make capital out of this discovery, though sorely provoked by the really brutal behaviour of the young Squire's sister ; and when the young fisherman loses his sight while rescuing her grand-uncle from his burning cottage, she decides to reward his devotion with her hand. The results of ilIirry-Ann's chivalrous reticence are altogether disastrous. The blind fisherman, smitten with furious jealousy of the innocent Squire, allows him to walk over a precipice without a word of warning. However, he is himself opportunely eliminated on his marriage day by an access of incurable insanity, and the tutor, who has conveniently come in for a small fortune, returns to console the afflicted heroine. Though somewhat marred by its lurid catastrophe, this is a well. written and interesting novel.
The five stories collected in the volume which derives its name, The World's Mercy, from the longest, are unequal in merit as• well as diversified in character. "The World's Mercy" is one of those elaborately constructed experiments in agony-piling that lose half their effect from the lack of inevitableness. The heroine is a young married woman who has lost three children owing to the brutality and cruelty of a drunken husband. The opening chapter describes how she rushes out of the house with her sick baby to escape personal violence, and, while half-mad with terror, unwittingly com- promises herself by taking refuge with a neighbour,—a young doctor. The child dies, the wife remains perdue with the young doctor, and eventually consents to become his mistress. After several years her protector decides to marry, and deserts her. Meantime, the drunken husband has reformed, and, after ten years, comes across his wife, who in despair has taken to drink and thieving, and sunk to the status of a street flower- seller. There is a deathbed reconciliation, and the husband devotes himself to the fifth child, who was born after his wife had left him. The story is painful enough in its outlines, but the artificiality of its treatment robs it of all poignancy. "A Sweet Revenge" is a slight but agreeable sketch of the dis- comfiture of an heiress-hunter, the heiress having successfully resorted to the familiar device of a preliminary disguise. From persifiege we again turn to strenuous sentiment in "An Old Song," another long-drawn essay in the art of grataitons pathos. "The Widow's Clock," which concludes the collection, attributes to the English rustic sentiments somewhat sug- gestive of the operatic peasant, but it is a genial little idyll all the same.
Antony, the surnameless hero of Mr. Le Gallienne's new fantasy, was a decadent poetaster who lived in the woodlands with his amiable wife Beatrice and their four.year-old daughter Wonder. They were a most united and happy family until Antony one day brought home from Covent Garden the plaster death-mask of a girl who had drowned herself in the Seine. Defying the laws of gender, Antony christened the mask " Silencieuz," morehipped it, and talked to it, until at length the mask began to answer him back. He then discovered that the original had been Sappho, but that at various successive ages and in different reincarnations it had been identified with a number of famous or notorious women. Finally, the mask claimed a "human sacrifice," whereon the submissive Antony forced his child Wonder to kiss it, with the result that she sickened and died. Smitten with remorse and resentment against the image, Antony now enjoyed a lucid interval, during which he treated his wife affectionately, and took her away to the hills for change of air. On their return home he took a "huge hammer" and went forth to smash the mask, but his oourage failing him, buried it instead. Despairing of her husband's recovery—by this time his mania had become acute—Beatrice, instead of having him locked up, went out and drowned herself. When she was taken from t he pond Antony cheerfully remarked : "It is very sad—poor little Beatrice—but how beautiful ! It must be wonderful to die like that." It is only right to add that he had been drinking heavily. Viewed either as a story or an allegory, The Worshipper of the Image is a deplorably maudlin per- formance.
Mr. Imlay Taylor gives a clever picture of the time of Henry VIII. in The Rouse of the Wizard, a novel which has the added attraction—not always to be met with in his- torieal romances—of an engrossing love interest. Seeing that the sad last days of the unfortunate Katharine of Arragon, the brief triumph and subsequent humiliation of Anne Boleyn, and the birth of Jane Seymour's son all come within the scope of the story, Mr. Taylor certainly cannot be accused of neglecting one of the most salient characteristics of the Monarch whom the schoolboy described as "the most celebrated of widowers." On the other hand, the figure of the wizard is not so impressive as its author doubtless meant it to be. His part in the story is not very important, and there seems no special reason why his house should give its name to the book. But criticisms of such minor defects are ungenerous in regard to a book as readable and entertaining as this.
The indefatigable "John Strange Winter" has returned to her more illustrious nom de guerre, though The Money Sense is by no means the cheerful, prattling sort of book which first brought that signature into notice. It presents a clever but most unlovely picture of a most unlovable set of people, and the reader cannot tell which he dislikes the most, the heroine or her successive husbands,—the good-natured, profligate little Jew whom she divorces, or that horrible old Silenns, the fashionable portrait painter whom she marries later on. In fact, the whole book, without being guilty of grossness, " hath a kind of smack" (as Gobbo would say) which makes it anything but palatable reading.
Loaves and Fishes is a sympathetic account of the brave struggle made by a Nonconformist clergyman and his wife to live on an income of £100 a year. The story is interesting and pleasantly written, though the solution of the difficulties of the devoted couple is not very well contrived. A young lady, however deserving her parents may be, does not as a rule, on the completion of her term of training as a public singer, step into the enjoyment of an excellent income as the outcome of success at a single oratorio concert.
Most of us will be glad, after reading " Sema Jeb's " novel Uncle Peter, that uncle Peter was not our uncle. His idea of avuncular duty was to carry off a small child of five and bring it up in a "vast solitude" in Norway. This is more in keeping with a nonsense rhyme of Mr. Lear than with the method of a normal novel. However, the worthy gentleman was slightly insane, which is a good excuse for him ; especially as by a series of most fortunate coincidences the nephew, who tells the story, at last discovered his real parentage and comes by his own. For the rest, the book is written in a lively vein and is fairly easy of perusaL
Miss Stevenson has chosen too large a canvas in A Maid of the Moor, with the result that her story is confused and the portraiture somewhat hazy. Readers who have a good deal of time and patience to disentangle the threads will be rewarded by a quiet story, marked by a certain amount of interest and some indication on the part of the author of a power of character drawing.
Mr. Lindsey's Cinder-Path Tales, a collection of episodes in the life of an athlete, are more notable for their technical knowledge than romantic quality. We have found it difficult to be profoundly interested in the exploits and fortunes of the narrator, a Lancashire amateur of good family who leaves England under a cloud and turns professional and trainer in the States. The design on the cover is a good example of the dangers of realism. It is probably a correct delineation of a runner taking a hurdle in the "three strides,' but might be mistaken by a layman for a one-legged man keeping wicket.
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