British Quarterly Review, American Edition, Vol. LIII / January and April, 1871

by Various

My Little Lady. Hurst and Blackett.

This charming novel, evidently by a female hand, is written with much grace and variety. The idea on which it is based has the advantage of perfect novelty. The 'little lady' is the child of an inveterate aristocratic gambler called Linders, who lives at Spa and Baden and other places of the same class, and who has a marvellous capacity for 'breaking the bank.' Whether he has a 'Martingale' we are not told, and indeed the authoress occasionally shows that she is quite properly unfamiliar with rouge et noir and roulette. But the conception is that this fellow, though on the whole a scoundrel, loves his little daughter Madelon, and that she, following him everywhere, becomes acquainted with the games he plays, and innocently regards gaming as quite a proper mode of making money. The complications herefrom arising are manifold, and are told felicitously: but the writer, who is probably a beginner, is apt to spin out her description and narrative to a rather wearisome length. Rapidity of narration is becoming one of the rarest qualities of modern authorship. That authors are paid for quantity instead of quality sufficiently accounts for this: and the great novel-manufacturers of the day, who turn out a volume a month and find readers for them, must, we suppose, be tolerated: but we cannot help regretting this unsatisfactory prolixity when, as in the present case, there is a pretty and piquant and original story to be told. However, it will be largely read, since it is high above the average of tales of the same order. Of the characters, the best drawn is the great gambler himself; hardly a possible personage, we suspect, but if possible curiously interesting. Madelon in her utter simplicity is very lovely; and she is quite conceivable, since there is no reason why a young girl should see any harm in gambling. Nine people out of ten would be puzzled to say on the instant why gambling is wrong: and the state of society shows that very 'honourable men' (as Mark Antony hath it) can see no harm in the doings at Tattersall's and the Victoria Club. So that a little girl whose father was an astute patrician gambler, should innocently take to rouge et noir, is quite intelligible—and a very pretty story is based upon it, with some strongly dramatic scenes therein. By the way, the names of flowers should be properly spelt, especially by lady writers: Westeria (vol. ii. p. 185) ought to be Wistaria, as it was named after Caspar Wistar, professor of anatomy in the University of Pennsylvania.

Harold Erle. By the Author of "The Story of a Life."

The author of this poem reveals his high and delicate culture, and not unfrequently a true poetic grace. There are lines, passages, and entire scenes, which suggest the blank verse of Wordsworth. We are not reminded of the introspection and subjective might by which Wordsworth brings under the microscope of his 'inward eye' the beauties of nature and the mysteries of life, but of his bald simplicity, of his religious use of common-place, as well as of his partial inability to appreciate the difficulty which the great majority of the human race experience in perceiving a poetic side of 'common things.' 'Harold Erle' is a singularly painful theme, and one which will not readily lend itself to the Muses. The dangers incident to the marriage of blood relations, and the Nemesis which hereditary insanity imposes on some who enter into the lists of love, are not refreshing matters for contemplation. Blighted affections, the madhouse, and the grave, certainly provide material for high imaginative treatment, but when these strong colours are used chiefly with a view of entrapping us into a philosophic generalization of a universal law of marriage, we are disposed to feel that poetry itself has here degenerated into social philosophy. 'Harold Erle' is a powerful story, but the moral and the motive of it seem insufficient, and the dénouement is decidedly prosaic. The l'envoie of the poem seems to be: 'Young people, do not marry your first cousins; should your parents have been so foolish as to have done this, then, by all the nine Muses, do not marry at all.'

The career of Harold Erle is well told. Certain scenes are portrayed with pictorial power. There are tender touches of consummate grace, and emotions, events, and sacrifices are narrated which show how fertile this unwelcome theme has become in the hand of an accomplished writer.

Martha. By William Gilbert, Author of 'Lucrezia Borgia,' &c. Hurst and Blackett. 1871.

In the conduct of this story Mr. Gilbert has not stinted his readers in the matter of time. We are furnished with the family history and domestic details of four, if not five, successive generations. Near the commencement of the story we are introduced to a wealthy young spendthrift, who is startled by losses on the turf into propriety, thrift, and marriage. The closing pages of the novel bring us acquainted with the great-grandchildren of this worthy. An extraordinary number of prosy and uninteresting characters—many of them mere dummies—try the patience of the reader. With aggravating minuteness circumstances which have no bearing on the story are laboriously detailed. About a dozen different illnesses or accidents are portrayed at such length as to suggest the notion that a hospital clerk had nefariously introduced into the author's manuscript some pages from his medical note-book. The oracular twaddle of the medical adviser who figures throughout the story is redeemed from common-place only by the presentation of a rather interesting psychological problem which, we presume, may be stated thus: Is it possible on purely physical, or at least subjective, grounds to account for the belief entertained by an otherwise rational person that the phantoms of her departed relatives continually visited her in the great crises of a chequered life? We presume that Mr. Gilbert intends to suggest a strong affirmative. The subject of these hallucinations, called Martha Thornburg, is the only character of the story who possesses the minutest tittle of interest. She is the impersonation of unselfish consecration of life to the good of others, and on two separate occasions in her long life, at considerable intervals from each other, she is represented as enduring the very extremity of human suffering. She becomes a lightning-conductor of all the accumulated misfortune with which the devil of the piece has charged the thunder-cloud that spends its fury on this ill-fated family.

There are two villains, at least, among the dramatis personæ so utterly unredeemed by a single ray of goodness as to despoil them of all human interest. The one apparently belongs to the genus rattlesnake, the other to the genus hyæna. Bigamy, fraudulent bankruptcy, forgery, destitution of natural affection, detestable cowardice, attempted fratricide and murder, are a few of the peccadilloes of the more refined devil, who at last dies in his bed; the other, we are thankful to say, hangs himself. The vigorous, prosperous, generous brother of 'Martha,' as well as many other characters, are very faintly sketched, and the principal, if not the sole, interest of the story consists in the misguided goodness of 'Martha,' who covers herself with the suspicion of complicity with the miscreant who had been throughout the curse of her family. However, the mystery is cumbrous in the extreme, and the solution of it by no means artistic. We certainly cannot congratulate Mr. Gilbert on a successful use of his undoubted powers; but we are glad to know that, after all their vicissitudes, Martha Thornbury, her brother, his nephew, and the wife and family of the latter are all doing well. Their furniture is excellent, their wardrobe complete, their bracelets, ornaments, and toys abundant; and we earnestly trust that should any illness or accident befall them, Dr. Wilson will be at hand, not only with skilful treatment, but with ample explanations of all the pathological phenomena.

Dorothy Fox. By Louisa Parr. Strahan and Co.

It is vain to pooh-pooh love stories, so long as the passion itself rules the world so much as it does; the thing that provokes the protest of sensible people is, that love stories are-often so ineffably foolish, as indeed are people who are in love. A thoroughly good love story, high-minded, true-hearted, and sensible, is about as good a service as a novelist can render to her generation. To inculcate noble principles, and inspire noble feelings in the pursuit of the passion upon which the chief social happiness of the world depends, is a work worthy of the highest genius, and demanding the gratitude of all who wish well to mankind. 'Dorothy Fox' is a love story pure and simple. Dorothy is the daughter of a Quaker of the strictest sort, a wealthy hosier, destined to marry Josiah Crewdson, also a well-to-do tradesman; but, as even the primmest and most dutiful Quakeresses will do, she takes it into her pretty head or heart to fall in love with Captain Charles Verschoyle, a poor cadet of a good family, whose mother, Lady Laura, is bent upon both him and his sister making good matches. Charles reciprocates Dorothy's love, and will not marry Miss Bingham's fifty thousand pounds. While Audrey, the sister of Charles, instead of marrying as she ought old Mr. Ford, the millionaire parvenu, perversely falls in love against her own intention with Mr. Dynecourt, a poor barrister of ancient lineage. How Lady Laura schemed, and old Mr. Fox was scandalized; how wise and generous old Mr. Ford was, and how noble Josiah Crewdson—his disagreeable sisters notwithstanding—how charming Patience Fox was, and Grace, and John Hanbury, and how beautiful and refined Quaker-life may be, and often is, the authoress has told very charmingly. The characters of Charles and Audrey, with their glaze of worldly selfishness, which melts away like hoar frost under the heat of pure love, leaving an innate and uncorrupted nobleness, are very cleverly delineated; so is Harry Egerton, the rough old squire, with his kind, manly heart.