The beautiful, crazy Gerty Neville is [p 128] another instance of perversion. Her silliness is exaggerated in order that she shall weary and disgust the blasé aristocrat who has married her. Some of her chatter is more inconceivable than the ‘coo-ee-ing’ which Mr. Hornung’s ‘Bride from the Bush’ employed to attract the attention of a colonial acquaintance of hers in Rotten Row.
But the distortion which the character of Emma Burton undergoes, and the caricature of Gerty Neville, are, after all, easily pardonable faults in a story rich in noble thought and sympathy, bright with pretty, audacious nonsense, and containing such real personages as Jim Burton and his father and mother, Erne Hillyar, and the Honourable Jack Dawson.
Even in Silcote of Silcotes there are intermittent glimpses of finely-conceived character which almost outbalance the eccentricities of the Dark Squire and his sister, the fantastic meddler in foreign intrigue. Kingsley’s skill lay chiefly in his portrayal of men, especially of young men, such as the dashing Charles Ravenshoe and his philosophic friend Marston (a study of the George [p 129] Warrington type); Lord Welter, Lieutenant Hillyar, and Colonel Tom Silcote, reckless profligates, but likeable fellows all; Frank Maberly, the athletic curate; and Sam Buckley, the type of an Australian country gentleman. With old men he was less successful. Lord Saltire, the placid good-natured cynic of Ravenshoe, is, however, a clever exception. ‘All old women are beautiful,’ says Kingsley in one of his stories, and he never portrayed one that was not. His best are Miss Thornton and Lady Ascot. The younger women, excepting Mary Hawker and Adelaide Summers, are rather slightly drawn. Even Alice Brentwood is a somewhat indistinct personage compared with the Australian girls of Mrs. Campbell Praed and Ada Cambridge.
The superior position usually accorded to Ravenshoe among Kingsley’s novels is merited more by the soundness of its plot than by the naturalness of its characters. It was the author’s first essay in pure romance, and, with Henry Kingsley, to build character from imagination was always largely, [p 130] sometimes extravagantly, to idealise. He loved to people old country houses with walking mysteries, to unravel tangled genealogies, and discover secrets of youthful folly, to apportion property to rightful heirs, and endow his characters with a superhuman generosity. When Charles Ravenshoe is recovering from the long illness which terminates the full series of his misfortunes, he sends for Welter, the man who might be considered his arch-enemy, who not so long before that had seduced Charles’s sister and stole his fiancée. Ravenshoe is represented as forgetting all his newly-suffered wrongs, and thinking only of Welter as his favourite schoolfellow and youthful companion. Anticipating doubts as to the feasibility of this, the author proceeds to discuss the point with the reader, as he does in many similar instances throughout the story. He appears to have a constant anxiety about the impression he is making, and his comments and confidences certainly become distasteful. But this foible goes only a small way to discount the sterling merits of the novel.
[p 131]
ADA CAMBRIDGE.
Towards the close of 1890 the Australian booksellers—a cautious, conservative class in their attitude towards new fiction, especially that produced by the adventurous female writer of these latter days—began to display so marked an interest in the work of Ada Cambridge, that one not acquainted with the circumstances of the case might have credited them with a friendly—possibly a patriotic—desire to give due place to a newly-risen native genius. And when, in the following year, another story from the same pen appeared, the popularity of the author was firmly established.
The neat red volumes were on every stall; the Mudie of Melbourne gave them a place of honour in his show-window, and [p 132] the leading critical review said that the second story possessed a charm which ought to induce even the person who ignored fiction on principle to make an exception in its favour. It was the kind of gratifying recognition that the public always believes itself eager to offer the deserving young writer. Yet Ada Cambridge’s literary work had extended over no less a period than fifteen years. Of course, much of this delay in securing recognition might have been avoided. Probably in England she could have won a substantial reputation in a third of the time, and with half the labour expended by her in contributing to the Australian press. But, as the wife of a country clergyman, she had other matters besides literature to occupy her attention, and was content to write when there happened to be leisure for it, and to see her work in a few of the leading colonial newspapers.
About half a dozen novels were issued in this way, besides occasional articles and poems. The publication of the longer stories in the Australasian, a high-class weekly [p 133] journal, ought in itself to have made a name for the author, and possibly would have done so, were they not in most cases so obviously a local product, and therefore not to be seriously considered. It was a repetition of the experience of Rolf Boldrewood. In the end, as usual, it was the English public that first accepted her novels for what they were worth.
Ada Cambridge is a native of Norfolk, the lonely fens and quaint villages of which are a picturesque background of some of her best stories. In 1870, shortly after her marriage, she went with her husband, the Rev. George Frederick Cross, a clergyman of the Church of England, to Wangaratta, in Victoria. After residing successively in several other country towns of this colony, they settled in 1893 at Williamstown, a waterside suburb of Melbourne.
A novel entitled Up the Murray, dealing with life in the colonies, was published by Ada Cambridge (the author continues to issue her work under her maiden name) in the Melbourne press in 1875. Others of the [p 134] same character followed at irregular intervals. Two were issued in book-form by a London firm of publishers, but did not attain to much more than a library circulation.