Five Novels.
"A Wheel of Fire." By Arlo Bates. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
"As it was Written: A Jewish Musician's Story." By Sidney Luska. New York: Cassell & Co.
"Love—or a Name." By Julian Hawthorne. Boston: Ticknor & Co.
"A Social Experiment." By E. A. P. Searing. New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
"For Lilias." By Rosa Nouchette Carey. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company.
Mr. Arlo Bates's novel "A Wheel of Fire" shows such skilful construction, is so nicely balanced in its parts, while its literary execution is so far above the common, that we can only wish the author had expended such faithful and conscientious work upon a plot less hopelessly dreary than one must be which hinges upon the problem of hereditary insanity. Every other human infirmity may be rounded off, merged into a lofty ideal of acceptance, renunciation, and expiation. But under no imaginable conditions can madness be regarded as something from which the heart and soul of man does not shudderingly recoil. Accordingly, a heroine who is haunted, beset, and finally driven crazy by the dread of the fatal inheritance being in her blood seems set apart from the fluctuations and hesitations of maidenly passion. There is something unhealthy, eerie, in the story Mr. Bates has made and in the situation he has chosen.
Damaris Wainwright's mother has died insane, her brother is a hopeless lunatic,—in fact, he commits suicide in the early part of the story,—and she has accepted the conditions fate seems to have imposed, and has renounced all idea of marriage, when the nephew of her family lawyer falls in love with her and shows an indomitable resolution to win her for his wife. The old story of "femme qui écoute" follows. Damaris is swayed partly by his influence, partly by her own impulses, and in great measure by the freely-expressed opinion of the specialist who has had charge of her insane brother, that she is in no danger of inheriting her mother's malady. Unluckily for her, she half consents to engage herself to the lawyer. Had she wholly consented or wholly refused, her doom might perhaps have been averted. We frankly consider her lover quite unequal to the situation. He imposed upon her long and lonely musings, sleepless nights and melancholy days, when he should have given her the support of the strong will and powerful intellect which the author lays claim to for his hero. Agonizing over painful doubts is not good for people whose intellects hover on the border-lands of nervous fantasy. Lincoln, if resolved to marry the unfortunate girl, should have shown more Lochinvar-like haste. Instead, during the long interval of waiting, Damaris is allowed to run the whole gamut of painful experiences, and, naturally, at the climax of the story, her "fate cries out." Of course this is the author's intention; but we cannot help feeling that Miss Wainwright had hardly a fair chance. As an offset to the gloom and melancholy of their tragedy, there is a lively love-affair between two young people who snatch a fearful joy in the midst of as dreary an environment as can easily be imagined. Both Miss Dimmont and Dr. Chauncey Wilson are life-like, although not engaging, characters, and the doctor, in particular, although we do not think highly of his science, is a vigorous and consistent creation.
Although the plot of "As it was Written" turns on the murder of the heroine, the book is yet a considerably livelier one than Mr. Bates's, and imposes no such burden of hopeless misery on the reader. A startling and mysterious crime is dear to the human imagination, and here we are confronted with one hideous in its cruelty and inexplicable in its circumstances. The story is told by the passionate lover of the murdered Veronika, and there is much youthful eloquence and pathos in the description of his meeting with the lovely young Jewess, their sympathy in art,—for both are musicians,—their ardent hopes and beliefs for each other. They are to be married in a fortnight, when the frightful act is interposed which transforms the whole aspect of the world for the young man. The reader must discover for himself the key to the tragedy. The book is one of those which the phenomenal success of "Called Back" summoned into existence. That clearly proved that the public loved a mystery and a sensational dénouement, and ever since the annals of crime have been rummaged for horrors. But "As it was Written" has an advantage over other works of its class in a certain charm and freshness, not only from its Jewish setting, but from the fervid youthful feeling which gives a pleasing and natural touch to the narrative.
Warren Bell, the hero of Mr. Julian Hawthorne's "Love—or a Name," finds himself, at first presentation, on his way to offer marriage to Miss Nell Anthony, who has just been left motherless, and to whom he feels that he owes this manly tribute. He acquits his conscience of this duty, but performs it nevertheless in such a jerky, unlover-like fashion that few young women, certainly not one of Miss Anthony's force of character, could have been imposed upon. "I thought you l-loved me," said he. Which surely is not the way to win a fair lady. Much to his comfort, as well as to his ingenuous surprise, he is refused, and goes back to New York, having renounced "Love" and decided to care only for a "Name." Mr. Hawthorne seems to have made an effort to work into the story of his hero a faithful account of New York "ring"-management and official corruption. Warren Bell finds a patron in Mr. Drayton, who has all sorts of ambitious schemes to further, and offers his committees and his confederates a "big game" in the way of "water-works" stocks, and the like. These pictures of corrupt judges and dishonest corporations have some probability: they show us many clearly-developed sensual and mercenary scoundrels; they are all, very possibly, portraits from life; but they are all excessively crude in their likenesses and inexpressibly wearisome. It is a distasteful and unsavory world to which the author introduces us: if he wishes to show us consummate rascals we insist that he should wrap them in some veil of decency, if not of art, and not fill his pages with incidents and talk which properly belong to the police-court. Mr. Hawthorne finally rescues his hero from the ignoble set from whom he has luckily escaped winning a very bad name, and makes him seek his happiness instead in love, which Miss Anthony obligingly consents to give him. The other characters mostly expiate their crimes and misdemeanors in a succession of tragic and unpleasant incidents, and one closes the book with annoyance that so raw, tentative, and unpleasant a story should have been forced upon one's attention by its bearing the signature of a writer who can do so much better.
"A Social Experiment" treats of the experiences of a pretty mill-girl, the daughter of a washerwoman, who becomes the protégée of a wealthy and capricious woman of the world, who educates her, introduces her to society, then finally drops her and permits her to seek her native obscurity, where she withers and dies of a broken heart. The story is very well told, but with a good deal of needless discussion as to the right or wrong of the experiment. The heroine has complicated matters by a secret marriage to a man in her own rank of life, which later becomes distasteful to her, and the duties of which she refuses to fulfil. Like the three preceding novels in our list, "A Social Experiment" is rather doleful, and seems to have been written for any other purpose rather than to cheer and stimulate the average reader who longs for pictures of life which rouse pleasant fancies and kindle tender sentiments. None of these books are in the least degree commonplace, but, by excluding what is chiefly dear and precious to the heart and mind of common humanity, they exclude many of the qualities which achieve success for a novel.
In "For Lilias," on the other hand, the author avails herself of all the agreeable traditions of English fiction: there are warm and well-lighted rooms, well-to-do people, regular meals, afternoon tea, plenty of bread-and-butter, and a gentle ripple of friendly, soft-voiced conversation. This may not be original or exciting, but, after a good deal of crude sensation through some thousand and odd pages, "ways of pleasantness and paths of peace" are refreshing to the critic, who believes that although the novelist should not sacrifice his meaning to the requisitions of mere agreeableness, out of regard for art and the taste of his readers, he should still have beauty in some degree or other as his chief end in view.