SPECTATOR'S LIBRARY.
FICTION,
The Parson's Daughter. By the Author of" goyings and Doings." 3 vole.Bentley. The Abbess; a Romance. By the Author of" Domestic Manners of the Americans: n'hittaksraid Co.
THE PARSON'S DAUGHTER.
THE forte of "THEODORE Hoox is his perception of humour in character, more especially when it borders a good deal on eccen
tricity. Nobody can develop an oddity more triumphantly. He
has also a smart wit, and scatters over his narrative numerous clever sayings, some certainly of mere phrase, but others of a deeper spirit. He understands life in most of its grades ; but, of all the writers of fashionable novels, sets up least for a teacher of the mysteries of the great world. He formerly ventured some of the footman school of learning; but he soon grew wiser, and we have observed in his later writings no undue consideration for that class amongst which lie has himself lived somewhat on sufferance. His earliest and best experience was in the second tier of the middle ranks; and it is thence he draws all his most lively sketches. Such were a good many of the cleverest senes in Maxwell, as previously in some of the tales of the Sayings and Doings, the titles of which have escaped us. The merit of the Parson's Daughter is of the same kind. Its prime character is Harbottle ; a country squire, of great wealth, vanity, and coarseness of manners; buoyed up with a sort of humour, and a sense of enjoyment so exuberant as to give his company a zest wanted by that of genteeler and more intellectual personages. This character is presented with admirable talent: and it is not a mere picture scarcely deeper than the paper. Circumstances happen which show this man to his very base, and lay before us the merely animal and brutal foundation of a superstructure that passes on the whole for respectable if not ornamental. The perfect conception of this character in the mind of the author, is shown by the gradual and unconscious manner in which the brutal monster is made to exhibit himself. He begins with the boisterous and jovial, and ends with the black and horrible; and yet there is a most perfect consistency and identity preserved throughout.
Next to Harbottle in the skill of conception and the amusement afforded by the display of his eccentricities, is Dr. M`Gopus ;*a humourist, which no one could have drawn who had not seen a great deal of life, and which probably in any other hands than those of the maker would have turned out a mere absurdity. M`Gopus is or has been a Navy surgeon ; and it is only under a very peculiar experience that his eccentricities could have reached their high perfection. First of all, M`Gopus knows no distinctions of rank ashore : there is no nobility for him practically,— though be is by no means a theorist. He moreover never flatters, but makes a point of calling things by their right names,—unless he is opposed; when he immediately arranges himself in the opposite ranks to his antagonist, wherever the right may be. Add to an ardent love of contradiction, and a habit of giving the negative in the directest manner, an extremely bad memory, a perfect incapacity of retaining names, and a practice of querying every member of every sentence uttered ; and the nature of this peculiar kind of bore may be conceived. His company is saved, however, from being tiresome, by a vein of anti-humbug good sense that runs through his conversation, and by the sharp and biting things his infirmities, like Cadwallader Crabtree's deafness, enable him to utter to your face. His humorous testiness, joined with the activity of his movements and the independence of his character, also enable us to put up with him. He goes about with a young lord by way of a tame bear, and seems to be kept for the luxury of his snarls—a sort of bitter to give a relish to the sweets of fbrtune and rank. This lord, who unexpectedly becomes one by the drowning of a whole page of the Peerage in a yacht, like a litter of blind puppies, is the hero of the story, and a very poor devil,— very amiable, very handsome, very honourable, very silly, very much in love, and at the same time in the leading-strings of a fashionable mother. Lady Frances Sheringham is by nature, education, and habit, an intrig,ante: she is a disagreeable personage, but laid open by the author with a perfect knowledge of all the arts and basenesses of this sort of character when brought up in the favourable atmosphere of high life. The following scene will introduce Harbottle to our readers LadyFrances Sheringham is a poor and embarrassed widow, whohas taken a villa in the neighbourhood of the splendid mansion of the squire. She is bent upon a match for her son, which shalt restore the consequence of her family.
Scarcely had her ladyship given her definition of the duties of the lady's staff" officer, when a noise of bells ringing, dogs barking, horses prancing, and wheelsgrinding the gravel, announced an arrival It was Harbottle himself; who entered, followed by Lady Frances's footman, bearing a huge basket of fruit. Pines, peaches, grapes, and all the other best products of his houses. "How d'ye do, my lady?" Said Harbottle, "I have brought ye some fruit,, my lady, how d'ye do? Not the worse for raking—my poor wife has got a sad headache—I never have a headache, ha! ha! ha !—She is a delicate plant—I have had the best advice in the world for her everywhere, Paris, Rome, Naples, and Vienna—all one to me where I am—money is money, and I can always. have my money's worth—these are magnificent grapes, ar'nt they—I calculate they cost me at least five-and-twenty shillings a pound; but as I-say, what does it signify? Well, Frederick, what are you for to-day?" A little quiet," said Frederick, "I have some letters to write, and I have promised, moreover, to all at the Parsonage." "Oh, oh !" said Harbottle, with a laugh that was loud and harsh enough tomake the window glass vibrate "that's it—I know it—I saw it—I said to MIS. H. I smelt a rat : Emma vibrate, has made a hole in Fred. Sheringhaufs MIS. H. I smelt a rat : Emma vibrate, has made a hole in Fred. Sheringhaufs
heart, ha! ha! ha!"
Previous page