The general praise won by Uncle Piper for its author as a delineator of character appears to have decided her to give increased attention to her ability in this direction. The immediate result was scarcely a happy one. The analytical bias disclosed in the first story was largely extended in the second, with the usual accompaniment of a decrease in action and humour. Pauline Vyner, the central [p 282] figure of In Her Earliest Youth, a sensitive and speculative girl, marries without love a man who has saved the life of a child to whom she is much attached. In tastes and intellectual bent the pair are almost without anything in common. The story—an unusually long three-volume one—is mainly a minute study of Pauline’s disillusionment during the early period of her wifehood: how she escaped the temptations placed in her way by a man who had formerly attracted her; and how, with the birth of her first child, she experienced the dawn of affection for its father.
The story is excessively expanded for the small amount of dramatic movement it contains. Only three characters are prominently described, and these too seldom through the medium of dialogue. The central motive, moreover, is lacking in strength. It is difficult to appreciate the tragic pathos of so common a matrimonial error as Pauline’s, especially as George, though uncongenial in his tastes, and not exempt from the ordinary weaknesses of men, is entirely devoted to [p 283] her, and would readily have improved under her influence, had she chosen to exert any. Tasma’s more recent work is better both in spirit and literary construction. Very sympathetic and entertaining is the narrative, in Not Counting the Cost, of the adventures of the Clare family in their quixotic travels in search of the cousin who is to restore them a long-lost heritage. In this story and The Penance of Portia James the author gives some interesting scenes of Paris life. But to get the best samples of her humour, one must return to her first novel. The burlesque of Piper’s pompous, genteel brother-in-law is delicious. Mr. Cavendish affects to be revolted by the necessity of being indebted to the ci-devant butcher, while secretly luxuriating in his munificence. Finally, as a means of discharging some of his obligations, he conceives the project of hunting up a pedigree for his plebeian relative, after the manner of the enterprising person who opened a ‘heraldry office’ in Sydney about fifty years ago, and announced his readiness to provide clients with reliable information of [p 284] their ancestors, together with suitable coats of arms.
True, Piper is not a name of much promise, but there had been a Count Piper somewhere or other some centuries ago, and the very rarity of the name proved that every Piper must come from one common stock. Fired by this generous idea, Mr. Cavendish gave himself up to its pursuit with enthusiasm. He would spend whole hours in the Melbourne Library poring over books of heraldry. Every chronological or biographical document bearing upon the age in which Count Piper was supposed to have lived was made the subject of long and minute examination. When the monthly mail day came round there would sure to be a budget of letters in Mr. Cavendish’s handwriting, addressed to the different colleges and societies at home and abroad, who were to help in extracting all Pipers of any importance from the oblivion in which they had hitherto been suffered to remain.
Mr. Piper is at length informed of the progress of the inquiries, but shows a provoking obtuseness and indifference concerning them.
‘I am—hem!—I am pursuing a task of the utmost consequence to your family interests,’ Mr. Cavendish had told him one day. ‘In fact, my dear sir, I am engaged in a work of no less moment than that of reconstructing your family tree.’
‘My what-do-you-call-it tree?’ exclaimed Mr. Piper, [p 285] with a hazy idea that Mr. Cavendish had been trying some unwarrantable experiments upon his lemon and orange bushes. ‘Don’t you take and put any rubbish in the garden. I’ve got a new lot of guano, and I don’t want it meddled with.’
‘Guano!’ echoed Mr. Cavendish, with a tone of the most withering compassion. ‘I’m afraid you don’t quite apprehend my meaning. I am not alluding to coarse material facts at all. I am speaking of a genealogical tree—a ge-ne-a-lo-gi-cal tree, you understand? I am trying to rescue your ancestors from the dust of oblivion. I am….’
‘You’d better leave ’em alone,’ interrupted Mr. Piper, with the sulky accent of one whose suspicions have not been altogether allayed. ‘They won’t do you any good—no more than they’ve done for me. You’ve got some of your own, I expect; that’s enough for any man, I should think.’
Mr. Cavendish shrugged his shoulders and held his peace. If the matter had not become a hobby by this time, he would have abandoned it then and there. As it was, he contented himself by deploring the sad effects of low association upon the undoubted descendant of a count, and pondering upon the possibility of introducing a hog in armour instead of a stag at gaze into the coat-of-arms that he foresaw would be the result of his researches.
Equally comical is the spectacle of Mrs. Cavendish, on the eve of the first meeting of the two men, humbly wondering how she [p 286] could soften the heart of her discontented lord towards the low-born brother—‘how lead him to pardon, as it were, his benefactor for having dared to benefit him,’ and the subsequent reflection of Cavendish that not only was wealth an acknowledged power, ‘even though pork-sausages should have been its alleged first cause,’ but that, after all, ‘politic members of the great ruling houses in the old world had been known to make concessions to trade,’ and he ‘was prepared to make concessions too!’ Accordingly, he resolved that the meeting with his relative should bear the semblance of cordiality.
‘This is a real pleasure, my dear sir,’ he said, with ten white fingers—the fingers of thoroughbred hands—closing round Mr. Piper’s plebeian knuckles. No onlooker could have supposed for an instant that he had come, with the whole of his family, in an entirely destitute condition, to live upon his wife’s brother. Besides, we know that among well-bred people, to receive a favour is virtually to oblige a man. You only accept cordialities from people you esteem….
‘You’re welcome, sir,’ said Mr. Piper.
Then there was a pause, during which Mrs. Cavendish wiped her eyes, and Mr. Piper said very heartily, ‘You’re welcome, the lot of you.’
[p 287]
Cavendish is the only character that the author has treated in a consistently farcical vein. Eila Frost’s canting old father-in-law in Not Counting the Cost is made ridiculous in his harangue on the duties of the young wife to her insane husband; but, with this exception, little is said of him in the story. It would seem that Tasma regards broadly humorous exaggeration to be scarcely compatible with her somewhat grave style, for in all the later stories her satire, if not less pungent, is of a quieter kind.
Next to their humour and skilful presentation of character, the most noteworthy feature of these novels is their lucid and polished language. The style is, perhaps, scarcely easy enough for fiction. Its qualities and culture are those that equip the essayist or critic rather than the novelist. Indeed, judged by some of her early work in the reviews, and by the little philosophic exordiums with which she opens so many of her chapters, Tasma would have made a brilliant essayist. To a large class of thoughtful readers it will always seem that what her novels lack in [p 288] dramatic interest is fully compensated for by their more than usually faithful sketches of both men and women, and by their intimate and sympathetic view of our common life.
THE END.