WAECKED EARLY IN LIFE.*
PROBABLY it was the Country department of this joint-stock company that undertook Heather. We think the Town would have nipped it in the bud; and the Country is naturally more favourable to its development. On the other hand, most country is too richly cultivated for its successful introduction ; it flourishes best in flat table-lands ; and table-land—of the stereotyped draw- ing-room description—is exactly where we should expect to flncl it, and where we should certainly leave it, except for our office of critic. These, however, are idle speculations, suggested by our anxiety to know whether this Company, which is new to us, under- takes the financial risks of its speculations, in which case, with our present knowledge—though we cannot agree with the authoress in her ungrateful abuse of limited-liability companies—we shall not purchase shares. Not but what it has done its work, in this case, with some taste ; for the book is pretty, externally ; and is, with great thoughtfulness for its readers, confined within the limits of one brief volume, and provided with thirty-four resting-places,.
• Wrecked Early in Life. By Heather. London: The Town and Country Publishing Company, Limited.
in the shape of two blank half-pages, respectively at the conclusion and commencement of each eight full ones ; so that it is not laborious, except for unexpected difficulties in deciphering the English and supplying punctuation, nor unreasonable in its demands on our time, if only we had self-control enough to work gravely through its absurdities.
There is a story of a coachman who woke one morning in a ditch, and observing two horses in plated harness grazing quietly in his vicinity, and a carriage, in a condition of unmistakable ruin, hard by, remarked, with some anxiety of manner, that if he were John Smith, he had smashed his master's coach, but that if he were not, he had found two very fine horses and a good turn- out in harness. We suspect he leaned to the former opinion. Now if Heather is a writer of mature years and opinions, she has smashed her hopes of reputation ; but if she is young and a novice in her art, she has found a talent which, with cultivation and patience, may lead to profit. It all depends on whether she is John Smith or not, and we lean to the latter opinion. If we are wrong, it will be as well for every one that we should not spend much time in pointing out the stronger points in the story ; and if we are right, it is still more advisable to devote ourselves to doing what we can to set young Miss Heather on her feet. Our ground, then, for thinking that there is hope, is the unquestionable readableness of the story, the truthfulness, with exceptions, of the sketches of several of the ladies in it— we may Bay of all the ladies, except the heroine, who often speaks with an inexcusable haughtiness, anger, and indignation, quite inconsistent with her supposed perfection—and the liveliness of some of them, particularly those of Mrs. Paton and Mrs. Clare ; and further, the good sense, and good principle, and purity of feeling which Heather's favourite characters betray, and which are clearly but an interpretation of her own. So much for praise, which is more brief than scant, and now for blame. She begins with a mistake when she calls her story Wrecked Early in Life,— we don't call that a wreck which is floated off again at the next spring-tide, not only unharmed, but benefited by the opportunity of shipping some needful ballast. And the cause of this temporary stranding is so exaggerated a sentiment, so unreal a trouble, that we must either conclude Miss Heather to have been very hard driven for an interesting subject—in which case we fear there is a fundamental defect, a want of invention which will militate sadly against success as a novel-writer—or and this is more probable—that she has been youthfully hasty in choosing so unconsidered a cause of wreck, so highly sentimental a distress, so absurd a mystery. Here is a sensible man in a boat with some others, amongst them one whom he has excellent reason to believe is an escaped convict of the worst sort—indeed, a murderer. He sees him rise stealthily from his place and make for the captain's throat, and, in inter- cepting the attempt, accidentally knocks the villain overboard. Imagine such an absurdity as the worthy captain's arranging to keep the secret inviolate, lest his preserver's character should be stained as that of a murderer's; and imagine a healthy-minded young fellow agreeing to such nonsense, and thereafter going about the world hopeless of love and marriage, with set teeth and careworn expression, "with the mark of Cain upon his forehead," "with a crime haunting him ;" "I am a doomed man ;" "you know how hopeless my life must ever be, you know what I have to answer for at the end of it." Such rubbish as this would spoil a far better story, as making it rest upon an impossible absurdity, and the incidents are as improbable as the theory. The murderer is not drowned, but swims off to the deserted vessel, and reappears in England just when our hero, Hugh, would give anything to clear from the stain of blood the hand he wishes to offer to the heroine. Of course one of the few men who could identify him and who also knew Hugh meets the former at Plymouth, and the very same day reports the fact to the latter ; and singularly enough, the captain whose life Hugh saved is at Plymouth with his ship at that very time, and the murderer, finding he is dogged, hits upon that very ship to swim off to, so that he is run to earth in the very midst of his identifiers and accusers. This is a sufficiently absurd accumulation of coincidences, but there is a better "to top up with." The murderer, with the most vindictive feeling for Hugh, did not know that it was he that knocked him overboard. In his confession he spoke simply of the boat having lurched as he made a grab at the captain's throat, and so Hugh is saved, not only from the shadow of murder, but even from the connection of his name with the possibility of what might have been. The secret remains with him, the cap- tain, and the heroine, to the latter of whom Hugh has previously confided the written record of his "crime," in which, with amus-
ing inconsistency, we find that he has written down verbatim the very healthy-minded, matter-of-fact, and conclusive arguments, included in a conversation between him and his boat-companions at the time, to prove that there was not a shadow of sense or reason in his wild self-accusations. We feel often that we should very much like to give Mr. Hugh a hearty shake, and tell him to have done with his ridiculous affectation. Sentiment is overdone again in his friend Clare's appreciation of him, or, at least, in the former's expression of it. Imagine a jolly fellow say- ing "I claim a truce," or addressing his friend Hugh Maskeleyne thus :—" Yes, Maskeleyne, you have been my redemption. But for your restraining power in the hour of temptation, I would have fallen.
You preserved me from that easy road to ruin, the gambling and betting mania. When, as a boy of twenty, I was thrown among evil companions, yours was the hand stretched out to rescue me from the set of thieves who were draining my purse and heart alike." And the same fault is conspicuous in the sketch of the clever, delicate little boy who dies early—he is horribly good—be desires
"to be taught to be a hero," and tries to "be one of God's little angels," and makes little speeches to his companions on his birth- day, and gives them good advice on his death-bed, and grows altogether E0 painfully pious, that he reminds us of Mark Twain's "good little boy who did not prosper," and who wished to be like the good boys in the Sunday-school books. And he began so well, as a natural, affectionate, arbitrary, amusing little fellow !
The style is the old-fashioned one adopted by young persons who do not know how difficult it is at first not to make her characters "talk like a book." Miss Heather's conversations are carried on in the formal and elaborate manner of the dialogue or monologue of the dramas of our youth. There is a striking similarity between the rhythm of the following passage and the one in which Dr. Aikin's King Alfred opens that delightful
drama of our childhood. The "however, old fellow, I ant at your service," breaks the current of thought here, just as " Ah ! here is a path" does in its prototype:-
" This cigar seems to have gained flavour since we left London. I could stroll out here, blowing a cloud half the night, and should flatter myself meanwhile that the cloudless sky would greet my effort as an improvement to its unbroken outline. However, old follow, I am at your service, and will even consent to the painful ordeal of being beaten
at a game of billiards You may well chaff me, Clare, and some day I hope to have the pleasure of retaliating with a vengeance ; in the meanwhile, I will take my cue, and am preparing to make a good score."
Here is another amusing specimen of the same style:— " Jane, my dear !" he said, "you have no need to wear so serious an expression, even to-day. There is little for my wife to regret in the last, or any, year of our married life. You have done your duty so bravely, wife and made so many lives happy."—" Ah ! dear husband, you are too datterin... Many neglected opportunities might be recalled to reproach me. Only at breakfast I talked of giving up friends who do not exactly suit me, because one of them has given me a little offence by what was probably, a thoughtless speech. I see now, with the light of my husband's conscience, that it was wrong. You have ever been leading me onwards to any right judgment I may have formed through life, dear George."
May we venture to suggest to Heather not only to make her people talk like real people, but to study clearness of style, and grammar, and punctuation ? Here is a nominative without a verb :—" Three long French windows opened out on to a gravelled terrace, and in summer the grateful shade of the verandah, covered with roses and jessamine, whose fragrance delighted the senses, and conduced to that luxurious languor to which most people are greatly susceptible in the warmer months of the year." Here is a whole family marrying an uufortunate girl :—" The mother died, and the Fortescues bought the girl from her father to save her from his unkindness, brought her to England, educated her, and finally married her." What, too, is a" warm-hearted, truth-loving, sham-hating calibre ?" And how tedious must an interval be that can impede a gentleman's return to his family. And here is one of many specimens of anything but elegant Eng- lish :—" I would have danced with William if he had asked me, father ; but he has not given me the chance. I am willing to do my best to please you always, but, being now engaged for all the programme, from politeness must keep my word." And here, in three lines, are two mistakes in grammar :—" We can theP.make mistakes, and display our old-fashioned steps, without putting the rest of the company in confusion. Mr. Maskeleyne, I know, will readily accept my refusal, and have only a slight feeling of sarcas- tic amusement at the romance of 'we old wives,' Mrs. Courtenay." We would suggest that Heather requires long and anxious cultiva- tion, before the flowers of her genius will yield pure pleasure to their beholders.
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