Prison Life of Jefferson Davis. By Bvt. Lt. Col. John J. Craven, M.D. G. W. Dillingham Company, New York. Price, $1.20.
The recent controversy concerning General Miles and the shackling of Jefferson Davis while the latter was a prisoner of war at Fortress Monroe, makes this new edition of Dr. Craven’s book, originally published in 1866, of timely value and importance. Dr. Craven was the medical adviser of Mr. Davis during most of his imprisonment, and his notes, taken from daily and intimate intercourse with his patient, form the basis of this volume. While written with professional reserve and military discretion, it is a most satisfactory and reliable account of the facts concerning the imprisonment of Mr. Davis, and throws an interesting and significant light on his character as viewed on close range by a political enemy at a time when prejudice and passion so generally usurped the place of judgment. Dr. Craven frankly expresses his original prejudiced and bitter attitude toward his patient, even to naming the precise occasion on which a kindlier sentiment was aroused in his breast. A stronger, sincerer tribute to Mr. Davis’ character could hardly be conceived than this plain and unadorned record of the change effected in the attitude of an honest enemy toward the man whom he abhorred as a kind of moral monster. Dr. Craven was not only impressed with the learning and ability of his distinguished prisoner, but again and again bears impartial witness to his modesty, fortitude, and unselfishness, relating conversations and incidents which particularly impressed him at the time. The strength of that impression is sufficiently evinced by the fact that Dr. Craven had the courage to publish such a book at a time when sectional feeling ran so high.
The facts in regard to the shameful treatment of Mr. Davis by General Miles are fully confirmed by copies of the official reports bearing on the matter, and the account is a painful commentary on the injustice and cruelty of the policy allowed to rule in regard to a conquered people. Mr. Davis was sick and feeble; moreover, he was closely guarded night and day, in an impregnable fortress. Under the circumstances his shackling was a wanton and unnecessary humiliation of a helpless man, and the bare relation of the incident as witnessed by Dr. Craven, though set down without comment or criticism, is enough to make the blood of any generous reader boil with indignation and revolt. It is impossible to doubt the honesty and accuracy of such a record, and it must remain a heavy indictment against those responsible for the outrage here detailed. Dr. Craven’s son, who republishes this book, is fully justified in so doing, not only for the satisfaction of a present interest, but for the consideration of future generations.
The Marriage of William Ashe. By Mrs. Humphrey Ward. Harper and Brothers, New York. Price, $1.50.
Mrs. Ward in her latest novel works very much the same combination which proved to so exactly fit the public taste in “Lady Rose’s Daughter,” and if the result is not the same success, it will be only because the popular impression will be dulled by repetition. Again we have a heroine nurtured in a scandalous menage in Paris and shadowed by a criminal heredity, and Lady Kitty, like Julie in the earlier novel, has two lovers, contrasted in character much as were Delafield and the caddish young soldier to whom Julie so nearly yielded. The crucial moment of temptation, however, comes to Lady Kitty after her marriage, and the hand of fate which snatched Julie from danger plunges the later heroine into the abyss of ruin and disgrace. William Ashe, like Marchmont, is of a noble house and high in political circles, but he is not quite so much of an archangel, though he, too, exhibits a patient and tolerant forbearance toward the indiscretions and errors of the woman he loves, which, however philosophical, somewhat removes him from the normal human type and its sympathies. Geoffrey Cliffe, the objectionable lover, is a poet instead of a soldier, but he, too, woos Kitty to disgrace and finally meets a violent death. Both novels are elaborate studies of heredity, and in each the final decision between irretrievable error and duty hangs upon an unforeseen incident which turns the scales like a fate.
Again Mrs. Ward has drawn on real life for her characters and plot. The Byronic inspiration of Geoffrey Cliffe is sufficiently obvious and the suggestion of Lady Caroline Lamb’s story is plainly to be read in Lady Kitty and her obsession. More than one prominent political figure of a generation ago has been promptly identified by the English reviewers.
Of the two heroines, Lady Kitty is a better realization than Julie, who, to our mind quite failed to keep the novelist’s promise of intellectual brilliancy and social magnetism. It is really a wonderful and poignant impression conveyed by Mrs. Ward’s elaborate picture of Lady Kitty, frail and fair, passionate and weak, poetic and frivolous, sweet and perverse—with a lack of moral and mental balance which spells for us nothing less than insanity. For after all, we are disposed to question whether such a character is not properly a study in alienism rather than in feminine psychology. That she was not a responsible agent, but merely the unfortunate creature of her own impelling fancies and passions, is the view stressed by every implication of the author, and indeed, against the very shady record of Lady Kitty’s life can only be pleaded temperamental insanity and hereditary sin.
An equally elaborate, but not so successful, piece of work is the presentation of William Ashe. He is depicted as a kind of Admirable Crichton—handsome, learned, amiable—a scholar, a statesman, and a social lion. “Religiously he was a skeptic, enormously interested in religion. Politically he was an aristocrat, enormously interested in liberty.” But with all the author’s keen analysis and clever descriptive phrases, this versatile and philosophical hero never becomes very real to our perceptions or sympathies. It would seem that his creator had fashioned and molded him carefully and perfectly, but had failed to breathe into him the breath of life.
Mrs. Ward’s rich literary equipment is no less manifest in this novel than in her previous works, and her power to deal with the larger interests of life is undiminished. The old time English society novel in her hands has been expanded, dignified, transformed, into a serious and significant presentation of life and its problems. Her outlook on the world of thought, of affairs, and of men and women is technically informed and philosophically impartial; her talent is enormously efficient. Perhaps her remarkable ability was never better demonstrated than when she made in “Lady Rose’s Daughter” a deliberate bid for a wider and lower kind of popular favor. The new appeal, so marked in that book and in “The Marriage of William Ashe,” was so skilfully turned and has been so successful in enlarging the writer’s clientele, that as a literary tour de force, it challenges a kind of unwilling admiration. There seem to be lacking to her marvelous gifts and powers only the touch of spontaneity, the flash of dramatic fire.
The Georgians. By Will N. Harben, author of “Abner Daniel,” “The Substitute,” etc. New York: Harper and Brother. Price, $1.50.