BOOKS.
GUY DEVERELL.a
Ma. LE FANU has been fortunate enough to divide his critics into opposite camps. There is just enough resolute Ratcliffism in his tales, just enough of that lurid yellow light of mystery which is neither night nor day, to enrage those who insist upon realism and prefer the prattle of Miss Yonge's babies to secret chambers and deeds of darkness. On the other hand, there is quite sufficient of the man of the world and the acute observer of modern life to justify all who have a private weakness for mystery in a novel, in maintaining that if Mr. Le Fauu does not prefer the probable todpe improbable, he clothes his possibilities in the costume and the dialogue of actual life. For ourselves, we read his novels with real pleasure, and see the genuine power displayed in them, but we are persuaded that he is making one radical mistake in art, which we should like to discuss with him. The story before us is better than any he has written since his first, the House by the Churchyard, which, for reasons we shall afterwards give, is less faulty in its art, and richer besides in humour, than any he has published since. Indeed Guy Deverell illustrates admirably the artistic defect which we believe that we see entering into and injuring the unquestionable strength and freedom of his draw- ings.
He chooses habitually for the " tone " of his pictures a thoroughly unnatural (though possible) hue of colouring, such as is cast over a modern drawing-room by a yellow pane of glass, and then, assuming the lurid effect, he makes everything that happens within its limits seem as natural as good drawing could make them seem under such unnatural conditions. Mr. Le Fanu defended this in the preface to his last novel by the example of Sir Walter Scott, pleading that even the greatest novelists always build their interest out of sensation elements, and must do so if they would embody the tragedy of life at all. We think the difference between Mr. Le Fanu's model and his own practice is, that Sir Walter Scott and the romance-writers who may fairly be said to be of his school, always take care so to choose the circum- stances of time and place that the minor mysteries—the mysteries of machinery, as we may call them, the mysteries of disguised per- sonages, and haunted chambers, and dungeon vaults—are strictly subordinate to the personal characteristics of the tale. If Scott gives us a room iu which the bed descends suddenly into a vaulted apart- ment below, as in Anne of Gierstein, it is in a time when we know such arrangements to have been common enough, and it is in preparation for a scene wherein his great historical knowledge realizes everything so distinctly that the preliminary glamour of mystery is absorbed, as it were, into the light diffused by a vivid historical imagination. Mr. Le Fanu, on the other hand, makes the
mysteries of machinery, as we have called them, give the ground- tone to the whole story, and this, too, without so choosing his time and place as to make them seem in keeping with historical pro- bability. They are not subordinated to other and more important elements of his picture, and they are brought out into undue prominence by their strangene3.s in a ino lern story. lie gets his peculiar effects—and no doubt they are striking—by the contrast between the modern life he paints so easily and the elaborate
• Guy Deverell. By J. F. t e Unn3. 3 v1.5. London: Bentley.
artificiality of his mysteries, which seem to belong properly to another age. He will say probably that such mysteries really do occur in the present day, though they are rare. No doubt ; but the odd, however picturesque, is not, so far as it is odd, a proper subject for art ; the circumstantial and me- chanical part of a story should never so overpower the human and characteristic part as to make you think less of the characters than of the events. If an artist could draw a landscape truly as it is seen by the light of a momentary flash of lightning, he would certainly do wrong to prefer such a picture to a sunlight view of the same scene. The glare would be picturesque, but its very curious- ness and pictutarqueness would distract our attention from the more important and more natural elements of beauty ; it would be using the manifold beauty of nature to reveal a flash of lightning, instead of using the lightning to reveal the beauty of nature. In the same way we think Mr. Le Fauu uses his ability in painting modern character to increase the livid effect of certain unnatural (though possible) conspiracies of circumstance, rather than his skill in weaving circumstances together to bring out his characters. It would be ridiculous and most unjust to Mr. Le Fanu to com- pare his stories in any way to those of Mr. Harrison Ainsworth, who deals solely in lay figures, and therefore is not to blame for making them purely subordinate, which they are naturally, to the astonish- ing trap-doors, dark ways, haunted rooms, and other theatrical properties' of his tale. But though in no way to be mentioned in the seine breath with the writer of that astounding trash, Mr. Le Fanu is more culpable if, with his power of drawing living manners, he consciously draws such figures as the Bishop's, and Monsieur Varbarriere's, and General and Lady Jane Lennox's, in the present tale, mainly in order to heighten the lurid effect which their life- likeness gives to the air of mystery thrown over the tale by former crimes, by the existence of a secret passage, and by the wrongful possession of a lost deed.
And the reason why the first tale of Mr. Le Fanu's, The House by the Churchyard, seems to us the superior of all that have followed it, is that, by laying his scene in Ireland in the last century, and making everything in keeping mith the rather wild and headlong character of the Irish society with which he was concerned, Mr. Le Fanu avoided this effect of postponing his living figures to his plot. Indeed there were more pains taken in that book than in any of his recent novels to bring out fully the life of the time in which the scene was laid, and the mystery, instead of overshadowing this, was strictly subordinate to it. For example, the long trance in which Dr. Stark lay after the concussion on the brain which his mur- derer gave him was made subordinate to the appearance on the scene of that able, drunken, finery-loving, Irish surgeon, whose appearance, brief as it is, is a picture in the best style of Sir Walter Scott. In short, in the House by the Churchyard, though the mystery is insisted on with something too constant an emphasis, it really i3 absorbed in the reader's mind in the life of the time an place which the author paints.
We cannot say this of any of the later novels of Mr. La Fanu, but in Guy Deoerell, the mystery, though not in any way useful to the higher art of the writer, is far less prominent and lurid than in Uncle Silas, and is rather toned down and lost in more human interests, than brought to a head, as the tale goes on. The third volume is far the best, and is written with a general vigour, a power of delineating passion, and a self-restraint in managing the denouement, which is in some respects superior to anything Mr. Le Fanu has yet produced. lie gives us rather too much of that half- mysterious, metallic, ironic character of which he is so fond, which he introduced into the House by the Churchyard as Mr. Dangerfield, alias Charles Archer, —into Wylder's Hand as Stanley Lake, as Uncle Silas into his last tale, and of which he has here two, if not three, variations. Sir Jekyl Marlowe is the same character, with rather lees of the villain and more of the mere selfish man capable of villany, but still there is in him the same peculiar touch of cruelty, of amusement in the suffering he inflicts, which marks them all ; and in place of the silver glitter of Dangerfield's spectacles, of the smile with which Stanley Lake regards the tips of his polished boats, of the horrible sweetness of Uncle Silas's glass bell voice, we have here Sir Jekyl's peculiar chuckle when be sees his victim in distress. his antagonist, toe, Monsieur Varbarriere, is the same character in another attitude, done into French, and permitted to laugh inwardly. Nor is the Rev. Dives Marlowe, at his first entrance at least, without some of the same traits.
With these exceptions the story is exceedingly good and, like all Mr. Le Fanu's—and this is a great merit—flows with greater force, instead of dying out, as it approaches its end. The picture of Sir Jekyl Marlowe's death-bed, with the various figures that come to visit the sick man and depart,—the Bishop, with his mild and venerable age, and his rather shallow but real religiousness, the Rev. Dives, with his uncomfortable desire to begin for the first time in his life to talk seriously upon death, Monsieur Varbarriere, with his deceitful complaisance, and lastly, Lady Jane Lennox, with her burst of deep, sweet, remorseful passion, and the attitude of mind in which Sir Jekyl receives them all, are drawn with strong and vivid strokes. We must give as a specimen the admirable scene between the mild old Bishop, formerly the head of the public school in which Sir Jekyl was educated, and who had been thirty years before with Sir Jekyl's father on his death-bed, and Sir Jekyl. We should premise that though Sir Jekyl is in the greatest danger, the Bishop does not know this, and believes his ailment to be only gout :—
" Thirty years ago!' murmured the Bishop, with a sad smile, nodding hie silvery head slightly, as his saddened eyes wandered over these things. What is man that Thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that Thou so regardest him?' Tomlinson, who had knocked at the Baronet's door, returned to say he begged his lordship would step in. So with another sigh, peeping before him, he passed through the small room that interposed, and entered Sir Jekyl's, and took his hand very kindly and gravely, pressing it, and saying in the low tone which be- comes a sick chamber—' I trust, my dear Sir Jekyl, you feel better.'— 'Thank you, pretty well; very good of you, my lord, to come. It's a long way from the front of the house—a journey. He told me you were in the halL'—'Yes, it is a large house ; interesting to me, too, from earlier recollections.'—'You were in this room a great many years ago, with my poor father. He died here, you know.'—'I'm afraid you're distressing yourself speaking. Yes; oddly enough, I recognized the passages and back stairs; the windows, too, are peculiar. The furniture, though, that's changed—is not it?'—'So it is. I hated it,' replied Sir Jekyl. • Balloon-backed blue silk things—faded, you know. It's curious you should remember after such a devil of a time—such a great num- ber of years, my lord. I hated it. When I had that fever here—in this room—thirteen—fourteen years ago—ay, by Jove, it's fifteen—they were going to write for you.'—'Excuse me, my dear friend, but it seems to me you are exerting yourself too much,' interposed the prelate again.- ' Oh dear no! it does me good to talk. I had all sorts of queer visions. People fancy, you know, they see things; and I used to think I saw him —my poor father, I mean—every night. There were six of those con- founded blue-backed chairs in this room, and a nasty idea got into my head. I had a servant—poor Lewis—then a very trustworthy fellow, and liked me, I think ; and Lewis told use the doctors said there was to be a crisis on the night week of the first consultation—seven days, you know.'—' I really fear, Sir Jekyl, you are distressing yourself,' persisted the Bishop, who did not like the voluble eagerness and the apparent fatigue, nevertheless, with which he spoke.—' Oh! it's only a word more —it doesn't, I assure you—and I perceived he sat on a different chair, d'ye see, every night, and on the fourth night he had got on the fourth chair; and I liked his face less and less every night. You know he hated me about Molly—about nothing—he always hated me ; and as there were only six chairs, it got into my head that he'd get up on my bed on the seventh, and that I should die in the crisis. So I put all the chairs out of the room. They thought I was raving, but I was quite right, for he did not come again, and here I am,' and with these words there came the rudiments of his accustomed chuckle, which died out in a second or two, seeming to give him pain.= Now, you'll promise me not to talk so much at a time till you are better. I am glad, sir—very glad, Sir Jekyl, to have enjoyed your hospitality, and to have even this opportunity of thanking you for it. It is very delightful to me occasion- ally to find myself thus beholden to my old pupils. I have had the pleasure of spending a few days with the Marquis at Queen's Dykely, in fact, I came direct from him to you. You recollect him—Lord Elstowe he was then? You remember Elstowe at school? To be sure ; re- member him very well. We did not agree, though—always thought him a cur,' acquiesced Sir Jekyl.—The Bishop cleared his voice. 'He was asking for you, I assure you, very kindly—very kindly indeed, and seems to remember his school-days very affectionately, and—and plea- santly, and quite surprised me with his minute recollections of all the boys.'—' They all hated him,' murmured Sir Jekyl. `I did, I know.'•—
• And—and I think we shall have a fine day. I drive always with two win- dows open—a window in front and one at the side,' said the Bishop, whose mild and dignified eyes glanced at the windows, and the pleasant evidences of sunshine outside, as he spoke. ' I was almost afraid I should have to start without the pleasure of saying good- bye. You re- member the graceful farewell in Lucretius? I venture to say your brother does. I made your class recite it, do you remember?' And the Bishop repeated three or four hexameters with a look of expectation at his old pupil, as if looking to him to take up the recitation. 'Yes, I am sure of it. I think I remember; but, egad! I've quite forgot my Latin, any I knew,' answered the Baronet, who was totally unable to meet the invitation; • I —I don't know how it is, but I'm sorry you have to go to-day, very sorry;—sorry, of course any time, but particularly I feel as if I should get well again very soon—that is, if you were to stay. Do you think you can ?'—• Thank you, my dear Marlowe, thank you very much for that feeling,' said the good Bishop, much gratified, and placing his old hand very kindly in that of the patient, just as Sir Jekyl suddenly remembered his doing once at his bedside in the sick house in younger days, long ago, when he was a school-boy, and the Bishop master; and both paused for a moment in ono of those dreams of the past that make us smile so sadly."
The humour of the tale, too, is considerable. Take, for example, the following. Sir Paul Blunket is an agriculturist :— " 'Who's lost his sheep, my Lord ?' inquired Sir Paul Blanket across the table.—' I spoke metaphorically, Sir Paul. The Huggletonians, the sheep who should have been led by the waters of comfort, have been suffered to stray into the wilderness.'—' Quite so, I see. Shocking name
that—the Huggletonians. I should not like to be a Huggletonian, egad!' said Sir Paul Blanket, and drank some wine. 'Lost sheep '= to be sure yes; but that thing of bringing sheep to water—you see—it's a mistake. When a wether takes to drinking water, it's a sign he's got the rot.' "
Guy Deverell, like almost all heroes, is a lay figure, but the tale to which he gives the name is a very good and in parts a very striking one, by a man who could write yet better. Lady Jane Lennox's passion and despair are delineated with a depth of touch which shows the higher powers on which Mr. Le Fann might draw, if he would.
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