NOVELS OF THE WEER* WE deeply regret to find Mr.
Henry James in The Awkward Age once more carrying into practice that misguided opinion, by which so many modern writers of fiction are obviously actuated, that normal and wholesome themes being exhausted, a novelist can only display originality or achieve artistic results in the delineation of the detestable. It is needless to observe that in the execution of this aim Mr. James refrains from employ- ing the methods in vogue amongst the naturalistic realists. He never calls a spade a spade, or a " d—d shovel" ; he does not visit "mean streets," or minutely describe the symptoms of epilepsy, or deal in physical or physiological horrors. His characters all belong to "the classes " ; they are clothed sumptuously, they live in luxury, and sedulously eschew violence in speech or action. And yet, in spite of this external suavity, the atmosphere of mental and moral squalor in which they move is far more oppressive than that into which we are transplanted by Mr. Morrison or any of the alum realists. The dialogue of The Awkward Age, with its scrupulous avoidance of candour, its wealth of sinister sug- gestiveness, is a marvel of enigmatic insinuation. The splendid phrase of Longinus, who defines sublimity as "the echo of a noble mind," moves one to describe this strange romance as a whispering-gallery of ignoble souls. All the resources of Mr. James's subtle analysis and ingeniously elaborate style are lavished on the portrayal of a set of smart degenerates, whose very nicknames—e.g., "Mitchy " and "Tishy "—enhance their odiousness. The personage who comes nearest to appealing to the sympathies of the plain person is an elderly gentleman, who, after proving un- successful in his courtship of a certain incomparable Lady Julia, renews his suit to her granddaughter. The grand- daughter in question sums up the situation by observing in the last chapter : "We're many of us, we're most of us—as you long ago saw and showed you felt—extraordinary now. We can't help it. It isn't really our fault. There's so much else that's extraordinary that if we're in it all so much we must naturally be." Lest we should be accused of doing Mr. James an injustice, let us quote a passage, chosen at random, • (L) The Awkward Age. By Henry Jame% London : W. Heinemann. [66.] —(2.) Bagged Lady. By W. D. Howells. London : Harper. and Brothers. [6a.]—(3.) The Newspaper Girl. By Mrs. C. N. Williamson. London : C. A. Pearson. [es.]—(4.) The Passing of Prince Boson. By John Blekerdyko. London : Thomas Bttrleigh. [6a.]—(5.) Fortune's My Foe. By J. Bloundelie- Burton. London : C. A. Pearson. [6s.]—(6.) The Mandate. By T. Baron RasselL London : John Lane. [6s.]—(7 ) d Riviera Boniance. By Blanche Roosevelt. London : Downey and Co. [68.1—(S.) King or Knave. Edited by W. H. Jolmson. i.,ondon : Gay and Bird. [68.]—(9.) Faith: a Story of St. Forth. By J. IL Harris. London : Service and Paton. [Ie. 6d.]—(10.) The Passion of Rosamund Keith. By Martin J. Pritchard. London : Hntchinecn and Co. [66.]—(1L) %Warne: a Stlhouette. By Jean Macpherson. London: John Long. (3a. 6d.) which happens to be fairly free from the suggestion of that moral mal'aria in which, according to the author, so many of his characters are steeped. The scene is a dinner party, and the guests are just going down to dinner:- " The sign of Tishy Grendon—as it had been often called in a society in which variety of reference had brought to high perfec- tion, for usual safety, the sense of signs—was a retarded facial glimmer that, in respect to any subject, closed up the rear of the procession. It had been said of her indeed that when processions were at all rapid she was usually to be found, on a false impression of her whereabouts, mixed up with the next ; so that now, for instance, by the time she had reached the point of saying to Vander- bank Are you really hungry?' Nanda had begun to appeal to him for some praise of their hostess's appearance. This was of course with soft looks, up and down, at her clothes. Isn't she too nice ? Did you ever see anything so lovely I '= I'm so faint with inani- tion,' Van replied to Mrs. Grendon, that—like the traveller in the desert, isn't it 1-4 only make out, as an oasis or a mirage, a sweet green rustling blur. I don't trust you.'—' I don't trust you,' Nanda said on her friend's behalf. She isn't "green"—men are amazing : they don't know the dearest old blue that ever was seen.'—' Is it your "old blue"?' Vanderbank, monocular, very earnestly asked.
I can imagine it was " dear ' but I should have thought—' It was yellow '—Nanda helped him out= if I hadn't kindly told you.' Pishy's figure showed the confidence of objects consecrated by publicity ; bodily speaking a beautiful human plant, it might have taken the last November gale to account for the completeness with which, in some quarters, she had shed her leaves. Her com- panions could only emphasise by the direction of their eyes the nature of the responsibility with which a spectator would have seen them saddled—a choice, as to consciousness, between the effect of her being and the effect of her not being dressed. Oh, I'm hideous— of course I know it,' said Tishy. I'm only just clean. Here's Nanda now, who's beautiful,' she vaguely continued, and Nanda '—' Oh but, darling, Nanda's clean too I' the young lady in question interrupted ; on which her fellow-guest could only laugh with her as in relief from the antithesis of which her presence of mind had averted the completion, little indeed, for the most part, as in Mrs. Grendon's talk that element of style was involved."
It is curious to note how in this novel Mr. Henry James has come to rely on the assistance of italics and quotation-marks in order to enhance the inner significance of conversations which are conducted almost entirely on the principles of euphemism and aposiopesis. Here, again, the heroine supplies us with an illuminative phrase. Speaking to one of her intimates, she says: "It was when you were most controlled —' Van's amusement took it up. 'That we were most detrimental.'—` Yes, because of course what's so unutterably awful is just what we most notice.'" On the whole, we never remember to have read a novel in which the disproportion between the ability employed and the worth or attractiveness of the characters was more glaring.
While Mr. Henry James has devoted his remarkable talent to the nebulous adumbration of sophisticated viciousness in high places, his compatriot Mr. Howells has exercised a no less subtle faculty of analysis on the portrayal of a group of normal, or at any rate ordinary, New Englanders, mostly middle class in station, simple in their pleasures, and in- genuous in their speech. The heroine of Ragged Lady is the daughter and eldest child of an intelligent mechanic who has come to the mountains in search of health. Clementina, for that is her name, besides mothering her brothers and sisters in their ramshackle home, occasionally joins the "help "—i.e., staff of waitresses—at a neighbouring summer hotel, where she becomes a general favourite, and inspires a tender passion in the hearts of the hotel clerk and the head-waiter,—who, by the way, is a poor University student studying for the ministry. Eventually she is carried off as companion by a wealthy widow, a fussy inalacle iin,aginaire of humble origin, visits Europe, is introduced into society, marries a young American of the unromantic name of Hinkle, and six years after his pre- mature death links her lot to that of the ex-head-waiter, now a returned missionary. Thus cursorily outlined the story sounds homely and commonplace enough in all conscience, but as a matter of fact, in spite of the rigorous employment of the New England rural dialect and the occasional angularities of Mr. Howells's style, Ragged Lady has in full measure the sovereign qualities of fascination and distinction. The fascination is not the "fascination of corruption," but. that which springs from the delicate and sympathetic- revelation of a *eharacter so nobly simple, so graciously tender, as to revive the image of the legendary Una. Clementine, who inspired the worldly Vice-Consul at Venice with doubts whether she was a perfect little saint or a perfect little simpleton, is the fine fieur of rural dignity, and her very mistakes are the outcome of gentleness, frankness, and' innocence. The European part of the story is far less interesting than the American ; indeed, as a story the last hundred pages are somewhat disappointing. But with all reservations, Ragged Lady is a delightfully wholesome and engaging romance. To read it after Mr. James's novel is like emerging into a pine-wood out of the medicated atmosphere of a sick room.
It is pleasant to note in Mrs. Williamson's new novel a return to that earlier manner which she forsook for a series of record-breaking excursions into the domain of what may be called vampirological romance. The Newspaper Girl, though the main motive is unlikely, at least involves no overdraft on the credulity of the reader. An American millionairess ex hypoth,esi is capable de tout, and given the conditions of orphanage, uncongenial relations, the absence of a guardian, and a thirst for "experiences," there is nothing so outrageously improbable in her scheme of swopping identities with an im- pecunious schoolmate during a trip to Europe. Of course, Miss Lucille Chandler never reckoned on the chapter of accidents, or forecasted the strange predicament in which she was placed by the loss of the liner in which her friend travelled, but being a young lady of adventurous temper she decided to accept the situation for the time being, and earn her living as a journalist in London. Here Mrs. Williamson has her opportunity and uses it uncommonly well, her pictures of the inner workings of those journals which cater for feminine readers being as entertaining as they are unedifying. We have only to add that if Lord Russell ever condescends to read a novel, he will find in this agreeable amalgam of sentiment and actuality fresh justification of his crusade against secret commissions. The methods of Mrs. Devereux-Compton, as set forth by that vivacious lady on pp. 126-27, are very far from imaginary, as a correspondence in the Times a year or two ago abundantly proved.
Mr. Bickerdyke's story, though exaggerated, and even absurd in many ways, has at least the qualities of animation and excitement. The Passing of Prince Loran is the romance of a swindler on the Stock Exchange who is alternately called Prince Rozan in society, and King in business circles, under which alias he is prosecuted for selling a non-existent gold mine. No one—not even the reader—suspects the identity of the two characters, which is, indeed, singularly unconvincing and impossible. After securing an adjournment of his trial by a bogus telegram, "King" being admitted to bail, "Roza,n" carries off the prosecuting counsel—who tells the whole story—with all the dramatis personce interested in the trial, in his yacht, and proposes to maroon them in the North Seas. The idea is audacious, but its execution is spoiled by an excessive insistence on the luxury and incredible perfection of machinery on the yacht. All the good people escape in im- possible ways in small boats ; the minor characters in one, and the hero and heroine (Lucas Gilbert, the counsel for the prosecution, and Corine, Rozan's putative daughter) in another a few days later.
Mr. Bloundelle-Burton gives us in Fortune's My Foe a sea- story of 1758, with a stirring prologue describing the birth of the heroine on board the Ariadne ' during the bombardment of Cartagena. The characters are rather like pegs on which the incidents are hung, but the mechanism of plot and counter- plot, pressing and kidnapping for the Colonies (a fruitful opening for villainies) is cleverly contrived.—Mr. and Mrs. St. Kelvin (the former a financial journalist, the latter the heroine) invite Horace Massie, the hero, a literary man, to dinner ; and St. Kelvin, who is, of course, a most objection- able person, induces Massie to mesmerise him. Massie, in whose hands St. Kelvin is as wax, and who cures him of his habit of drinking by suggestion, finally tells his host, when hypnotised, that he will die next. day, and St. Kelvin, who is much in the way, acts on the suggestion. Whereon Massie marries Paula St. Kelvin, and (very properly) goes mad. Although The Mandate is a very realistic and entirely un- necessary novel, full of all kinds of details, the relations between hero and heroine are correct, and it is this fact which leads Massie to wish to murder St. Kelvin.—A Riviera Romance is a vulgar and noisy story of gamblers at Monte Carlo, told in the diaries of Marcelle d'Estrees, the heroine, and Basil Ferranys, the hero. Both are Americans, and the hero has sunk to the position of a croupier.—King or EllaVe is described as the second MS. in Pierre Fourcade's strong box, and portions of it are somewhat cryptic to those who have not read the first. It is chiefly concerned with the amorous adventures of Henry of Navarre, and though not lacking in cleverness, is but a pale reflection of Dumas and his English disciples.—The earlier chapters of Faith give a careful study of the Old Methodists in Cornwall. The sequel which deals with the fortunes of the son who comes up to town and succumbs to its temptations is on stereotyped lines and rather tedious to boot.—The fulsome insistence with which the author of The Passion of Rosamund Keith dwells on the physical charms of his heroine is the only point worth noticing in this lurid and luscious romance.—Didums is a pretty, tearful little sketch of two orphan sisters, the elder of whom, a heart- less, good-looking shrew, marries a rich husband, and abandons the younger to a life of lonely drudgery. Her husband's eyes are soon opened by her selfishness, and their dissensions are complicated by his pity for " Didums," which soon ripens into love. The sequel is best summarised in Goldsmith's lines on lovely woman. While admitting the cleverness of the story, we cannot altogether acquit Miss Macpherson of a tendency to force the pathetic note unduly. The antecedents of the husband, again, hardly prepare us for his sudden expansion into so tender-hearted a personage.
Previous page
