BOOKS.

MARTHA.*

" MARTHA " is one of Mr. Gilbert's best books. Except that there is a little too much of those minutia which are hindrances

to the progress of the story, and quite unnecessary to the delinea- tion of any of the main characters in it,—minutia apparently inserted for the sake of minutia, and not to deepen the lines of any one picture or narrative it contains,—there is very little room for unfavourable, and a great deal for admiring, criticism. To get over our hole-picking first, we think Mr. Gilbert should take a little more pains to give a distinct picture of some of his secondary char- acters, especially where these are very closely connected with the story. Martha's brother, Edgar Thornbury, is an admirable picture ; one can see the somewhat imperious mien of the successful man of business, with his strong family affections, his resolve to have his own way in the main, and the sharp lines of demarcation by which he carves out that independent sphere of other people with which he declines to meddle. His wife, too, though only a sketch, a woman of externally reserved and impassive, and yet excitable and even enthusiastic nature, with her liability to forebodings of coming calamity, is quite adequately painted. But the nephew, Walter Thornbury, who is much more important to the tale, is a mere walking gentleman, with nothing to characterize him at all ; and yet as the son of so selfish and profligate a father, and so susceptible, gentle, and refined a mother, it is hardly likely that he should have had

this simply uninteresting, well-regulated character without a single feature or individual characteristic of its own. Nor can we feel satisfied that Walter's father, Mr. Morecombe himself,

the plausible evil genius of the tale, is truly painted on his first introduction. He is not needlessly blackened ; his conduct is quite within the bounds of probability from first to last ; but it is almost inconceivable that a man so thoroughly selfish and false should not have suggested doubts of his goodness and sincerity to a nature so fine and true as Martha's, even before his marriage with her sister. The plausibility of evil natures is, in novels, a good deal overrated. We hardly ever meet with men in the actual world who contrive to throw dust so successfully, and without raising even suspicion, into eyes so pure and steady as are usually attributed to their victims in novels. And that Martha, after learning the full extent of Mr. Morecombe's heartless profligacy, should have been more or less taken in by him again, is contrary to all reason.

Here our cavils may pretty well end. The main idea of the book, Martha's own character, is really a very fine study, very finely worked out from the first page to the last. Martha is one of twins, the child of a Quaker mother and of a country gentle- man of not very shrewd intellect, indeed easily imposed upon, but of considerable force of determination when he clearly under- stands his position. From her mother's nature and influence Martha Thornbury inherits the quiet inward intensity of feeling, naturally religious in its tendencies, which has always charac- terized the true Quakers, to which there is added in her something of that firmness of her father's temper, which takes a still more trenchant form in her brother Edgar. Martha's disinterested devotion, even as a child, to her twin sister and one of her little brothers who died early, is carefully painted, and Mr. Gilbert takes especial pains to mark the completely self-contained intensity of the girl's feelings on the loss of her brother, who had died during her own illness from typhus fever :-

" When Martha had fully recovered her senses, she naturally became anxious about the health of the other members of the family, par- ticularly of her little brother George. An evasive answer was given her, but she did not detect the ambiguity it contained. Two days afterward; in the presence of her mother and Deborah, she again inquired after the child. Mrs. Thornbury attempted to answer, but in vain, and instead, she burst into a flood of tears. Deborah then took upon herself the painful task of explaining to Martha that little George was dead. The Lord bath given, and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord,' she said. ' He hath in his mercy spared the; my dear, but thy little brother is now one of his angels.' Martha received the intelligence in her usual placid, undemonstrative manner. She merely bent her head forward from her pillow, as if in acquiescence to the Almighty's will, but uttered not a word. She remained perfectly still for a few moments, and then. gently turned her head on the pillow, as if to sleep. Her mother, surprised at her conduct, thought she could hardly have understood Deborah's meaning, and she resolved on the first favourable opportunity to tell Martha herself of the death of her brother. After a few moments' silence, so as as not to dis- turb Martha if she felt an inclination to sleep, Mrs. Thornbury noticed a slight heaving of the bed-clothes which covered Martha's shoulder, and * Martha. By William Gilbert, author of "Shirley Hall Asylum," die. 3 vols. London : Hurst and Blackett. 1871. she went softly round to the other side of the bed to ascertain the cause. To her great surprise she found that the poor girl, though perfectly silent, was weeping bitterly. Her tears flowed so rapidly that Mrs. Thornbury became greatly alarmed. The poor child's sorrow, however, though it seemed perfectly overwhelming, was displaying itself in her own peculiar way. Her grief was perfectly silent; she did not utter a soh, and, but for the slight involuntary movement of the shoulders, she might have been supposed to be in a profound sleep. Mrs. Thornbury now used every effort in her power to console the poor girl, but with small success. True, to a certain extent she somewhat suppressed her tears, but the effort was evidently made with the intention of pleasing her mother more than anything else."

The farther development of the same type of character is very minutely given,—Martha always subordinating all her own feelings to those of her family. Naturally hers is, and is meant by Mr. Gilbert to be, a perfectly healthy and very noble type of character; but its tendency to a sedulously self-containing intensity of feeling has in it the germs of something possibly morbid in case all the external claims upon her excessively strong feelings of family affection should be removed, and she should be left to brood upon the memories of the past. And this visionary in- tensity of Martha's feelings, which is liable to morbidness when divorced from active life, is to some extent stimulated by the mode of her twin sister's death. This sister marries, or believes

that she marries, a Mr. Morecombe, who turns out to be a very bad style of adventurer, with a wife living at the time of this pre- tended marriage, and Martha brings Charity back to die in a

ruined home, after the birth of a third child, which, however, pre- cedes its mother to the grave. One night, while Martha is nurs- ing Charity, who is not supposed to be aware of her own danger, she is wakened up from a brief sleep by finding Charity standing in the moonlight at her bedside, where she has come to tell her of her baby's and her own approaching death:— 'Do not be alarmed, dear, but I have this night received a message from the Almighty, telling me that I am to die; and that the poor baby will be taken before me. Better so,' she continued, her voice faltering with emotion : we shall soon meet again.'—' Charity,' said Martha, greatly astonished, yon must have been dreaming.'—' It was no dream,' she said solemnly. Martha now sat up on her bed, and passing her arm round her sister's waist, said calmly, Collect yourself, Charity, dear, and tell me what has occurred.'—'I cannot explain it, Martha, but I received the message as I tell it to you.'—' But were you not asleep and

dreaming Certainly not •, I was perfectly awake. I had been asleep, but did not dream.'—' Tell me how was the message conveyed to you?' inquired Martha, a sensation of awe pervading her at the time ; 'tell me who spoke to you?'—' No one,' said Charity, 'no one uttered a word to me. I awoke from my sleep and looked round to see if you were near me, but I found that you had left the room. Thinking you had gone to lie down, I determined not to disturb you, but partly raised myself up in bed to see if baby was comfortable in her cot. I mention this to show you how perfectly I was awake. Finding baby was asleep, I placed my head back on the pillow to wait till you came into the room. A moment afterwards I experienced (for I can only explain it in that manner) a certainty that baby would die, and that I should shortly follow her."

And the awe produced by this communication is strengthened by a saying of Charity to her sister shortly before her death :—

" One day, when she was standing by her sister's bedside watching her, Charity, who was evidently deeply absorbed in thought at the time, had turned her head to the other side of the bed; and Martha, fearing her sister's thoughts might be occupied on some painful subject, at- tempted to attract her gaze, by partially leaning over her. But in vain—Charity saw her not. Martha waited for some moments, and then said, in a sorrowful tone, and yet attempting to smile, ' Look at me, ray pretty one, look at me.' Charity, turning her head towards

her sister, said, will look at yon, Martha, with pleasure; for a sight of you is the only unmixed happiness that remains for me in this world. I will look at you with love, daring the few short hours I have yet to live ; and should it please the Almighty to pardon my sins and take me into his kingdom, my gaze shall still be on you—if it be permitted me— until we meet again there.' The solemnity with which Charity uttered these words made a profound impression upon her sister, and they never afterwards faded from her memory."

After her sister's death, Martha brings up with great care the two boys Charity leaves behind her, but as they get to the age when they are capable of doing something for themselves, they are sent out to their uncle in India. Martha's father dies in great poverty. Her mother also dies, and Martha is left with the old Quaker servant, Deborah, after the expenses of the funeral are paid, in extreme want, but hoping daily for a remittance from her brother in India, which is unfortunately somewhat delayed, and on which they have counted before it is quite due. In strict keeping with her reserved, acquiescing nature, Martha makes no effort to borrow or get help of any kind from others, and at last

the servant Deborah, though aged and feeble, makes an attempt to go to London to get help for her mistress from some of her own relatives, but dies on the way, and Martha is absolutely alone and destitute in her brother's house, which is fast falling into Away. Her health, enfeebled by enforced abstinence, gives way ; her mind

turns inwards on the scenes of the past ; her sister Charity's super-

natural foreboding and her promise recur to Martha's mind, and she begins to arrange the furniture so as to recall most vividly the scenes of her past life, putting her father's and mother's seats in their accustomed places, placing the Bible on the table where Deborah had placed it to read it aloud to her mistress, and bring- ing down even her little brother's cot from the garret where it had been put away after his death, to her own sleeping-room. As she becomes weaker and more emaciated, she begins every night to see the phantoms of the different members of her family sitting in their accustomed places, though they vanish when she ventures to address them aloud, and disappear every morning with the daylight. This part of Mr. Gilbert's picture is extremely powerful. Martha, who has nothing but bread in the house, and has lost all appetite, lives only for the comfort of her nightly vision, and is persuaded that it is sent to prepare her for death, and to rejoin above those whom she has so dearly loved. When very near.the point of death, and in complete unconsciousness, Martha is discovered and revived, and soon after the expected letter arrives with her brother's remittance, and still better, with news of his speedy return.

A new reach of the story then begins. Martha recovers under skilful medical care from the state of internal excitement and bodily prostration into which she had been thrown, and finds in her brother and her eldest nephew, who also returns from India, full occupation for her naturally healthy and affectionate mind. Everything, however, which depresses her health and recalls the past, and especially everything which excites anxieties that she cannot share with those around her, has a tendency to throw her back into the condition in which her mind preys upon it- self and the. phantoms reappear. Her sister's rascally hus- band, or pretended husband, who has returned from penal ser- vitude just at the time when his son's (Martha's nephew's) poSi- tion in a good house in London is becoming established, supplies this new source of anxiety. He extorts money from Martha under threats of making himself known to his son and claiming his right to help, if she does not give it to him. Nor dare she appeal to her brother for advice, because she knows her brother Edgar's peremptory nature and his loathing for the rascal, and feels sure he would hazard the disgrace to his nephew rather than not punish Morecombe. A frightful crime secretly committed by this man in the hope of killing Edgar Thornbury and leaving the business in the hands of his own sons, to whom he intends to appeal to take him into it, makes the position still more painful ; for her evidence, if she were to give it, would compel the son to appear as one of the principal witnesses against his own father. Her suspicious con- duct under this trial alienates all those of her friends now near her, for her brother and his wife have been compelled to return for a short time to India, and she is again isolated, driven inward on herself, compelled to feel the bitterness of universal distrust and suspicion and to look to nothing but death for her release. Of course, thus suddenly cut off from the only life that is to her any real life, the life of domestic love, she is driven inward once more into the visionary world, and begins to see night after night her sister Charity standing beside her and telling her of her speedily approaching dissolution,—a vision which is likely enough to fulfil itself.

Nothing can be more vivid than the fashion in which Mr. Gilbert, of course in his own peculiar style, stamps this unique and powerfully woven piece of imagined biography,— it can hardly be called fiction,—on our minds. For Martha is in no degree whatever a novelist's heroine. She is an old maid,—Mr. Gilbert says, at the opening of the story, already past fifty, which, if he looks well to his dates, projects the latter part of the tale into a future which the world has not yet reached, though that perhaps was what he intended,—of no particular power of mind, though great power of character, deep fidelity of affection, and con- scientiousness of will, being her only great gifts ; and such visions as she has are not grand imaginative conceptions, nothing but vivid recallings of the past, so far as that past included her own not very remarkable family group. Nor does she even indulge in these visions till her mind is shut off from all its natural domestic resources and she has no choice left except either to make new friends for herself, or to go back to the memory of those who are in another world. The picture of her silent nights passed with her phantom family, and afterwards, when she is robbed of the local associations which enable her to recall them all so vividly, with the twin sister who at the point of death had stood beside her in the moonlight to tell her of her coming death, is as full of pathos as power. We lay down the book under the impression that we have made a real friend, instead of merely adding one to the figures of romance, and that, a friend of singularly genuine and homely, though of so intense a nature. Hitherto novelists

have been wont to limit the preternatural in their stories to the lives of imaginative beings undergoing some grand ideal wrong. Mr. Gilbert, true to his own genius, has made a profound psychological study of an old maid who under the painful stress of pent-up affections, lives over again in a shadowy way the life of the past ; and he has given his picture a reality and power which will secure it, we believe, a high, if not the highest place among his own works, and a permanent recognition in English literature.