The purpose of this very clever book is to give a picture of the political and social state of France during the early period of the Second Empire, the period immediately subsequent to the coup d'état—the period of the Crimean War, and of the Crédit Mobilier. Anything more shrewd in observation, more competent in knowledge, more healthy in judgment, more caustic in refined sarcasm, more sparkling in style, it is difficult to imagine. The thread of story upon which these sketches are strung is of the slenderest. Raoul Aimé was Duke of Hautbourg, on the Loire, whose head shared the fate of those of so many of the old aristocracy in 1793, and whose estate was sold for a mere song to an attorney. Raoul Aimé's son went into exile, married the wealthy daughter of an English slave-owner, with whose money he bought back the estate, returned to France with Louis XVIII., and died a Minister of State. His son was accidentally killed in the streets the day after the coup d'état of 1851, his nephew, Manuel Gerald, being heir to his title and property. A sturdy, and noble-hearted Republican, Gerald cannot take possession of estates purchased with the money of a slaveholder, or live in France under the régime of Napoleon III. He lives, therefore, in comparative poverty in Brussels, and distributes the large revenue of his estates in charities. His two sons, Horace and Emile, enthusiastically ratify their father's repudiations, and study law in Paris in order to practise as barristers. The father, however, wisely refuses to accept the verdict of his sons as final, puts into their hands a deed conveying the estate to them, and puts them upon a probation of five years, at the end of which their decision is to be given. The two young men enter at the bar, take modest lodgings in the house of a haberdasher, and become the heroes of the story. Their characters are finely discriminated. Horace, the elder, is full of fine generous impulses and virtues, but has certain social weaknesses that render him incapable of the austere, not to say Quixotic virtues of his father. Emile, who is subordinate in the narrative, is less brilliant than Horace, but studious, solid, modest, and Spartan; both brothers, moreover, are affectionate and filial. The interest centres on Horace, who makes a brilliant début in defence of a press prosecution, and becomes famous; is returned deputy for Paris, becomes acquainted with M. Macrobe, the great financier, the founder and chairman of the Crédit Parisien; is so far entangled by him as to marry his daughter Angelique, notwithstanding a deeper passion for Georgette, the haberdasher's daughter; writes brilliant articles, makes effective speeches, passes through various phases of Parisian life, and ultimately, after his father's death, determines to claim the dukedom. Almost every class and aspect of the venal life of Paris during this humiliating period is made to pass before us, the chief personages being portraits from life, easily cognizable by anyone moderately acquainted with history: indeed, the names of some are but very thinly disguised. Thus, Jules Favre is Claude Febre, M. Thiers is M. Tiré, M. Arsène Houssaye is Arsène Gousset, Mr. Worth is Mr. Girth, Blanqui is Albi. Journalist, Republican, Legitimist, and Imperial, notably the renowned correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, who is everywhere and knows everything; politicians, lawyers, novel writers, financiers, aristocrats, bourgeoisie, Parisians, and villagers, are presented in careful portraiture—evidently from life—the whole being done with very great literary skill and brilliancy. The story, slight as it is, and notwithstanding the somewhat melodramatic incidents of the struggle between Horace and Albi at his father's grave, and the death of the former and his wife on the day they take possession of the estate, indicates great powers of novel writing, if the writer be so minded. Nothing can be more skilful, discriminating, or beautiful than the delicate contrasts in character between the two brothers, Horace and Emile, the two girls Georgette and Angelique, the two patriots Horace Gerald and Nestor Roche; or more masterly than the way in which the working of Imperial institutions is exhibited. The marvel is that any despot, in such a position of moral isolation, and with such unscrupulous and reckless methods of tyranny and corruption could, for eighteen years, have maintained himself upon the throne of France. The fact speaks volumes for the condition to which unscrupulous rulers and blind revolutions may reduce a great people. The writer's intimate acquaintance with the interior of French life, whether the court life of Paris, or the village life of Hautbourg, the legal life of the Palais de Justice, or the bourgeoise life of commercial travellers, and Parisian shopkeepers, is manifest in every sentence, and is something unique. The book is a gallery of portraits, in a series of social sketches eminently original and clever. A genial and high-minded Asmodeus, in a vein of delicate sarcasm, reveals a state of things which all were assured of, but which very few could picture. Here, with graphic realism, and yet with perfect delicacy, its terrible rottenness is indicated. In his very different field, and with a very different genius, both in quality and degree, the author of "The Member for Paris" has been as eminently successful as MM. Erckmann-Châtrian. We trust that the writer, whom we can scarcely err in identifying with the author of the brilliant French sketches which have appeared in the Cornhill Magazine, will work yet more fully the mine of which he has given us these specimens.
Behind the Veil. By the Author of 'Six Months Hence.' Smith, Elder, and Co.
It is an undoubted weakness in a writer of fiction when the interest of the story is made to depend upon a succession of exciting situations and tragic catastrophes. There was in this writer's former work a weird interest in the strange psychological problem which he set himself to work out, and which was done with a considerable degree of power and promise. In the present story sensational incident abounds, and is not earned off by morbid psychology. Here, as in the former work, the interest centres upon a murder—surely human life is varied enough for a fresh source of interest. The story opens with a railway accident, in which the hero is well-nigh killed, and, in his delirium, awakens certain suspicions about his antecedents, the pendant picture of which is a scene of murder in the Australian bush. After his marriage is broken off he nearly dies of typhus fever, in the delirium of which he removes the suspicions which had gathered round him; and Jessie, his betrothed, nearly dies of a ruptured blood-vessel. Twice he is found by Beresford in a remote part of Wales—the chances of finding him there being a hundred thousand to one, while the plot is carried on by a dozen most improbable coincidences. Then James his brother, who in fleeing from justice has slept in a railway truck, apparently rides to his death in a furnace, into which, by automatic action, it is likely to deliver him; but by a refinement of feeling, resembling that of a cat with a mouse, he is made to jump off and over a precipice, only to die a few hours after in the custody of the police, who are in pursuit of him for murder—having confessed himself guilty, first of the murder, then of the crime of blocking the railway, to cause the death of his brother. In addition to all this, Jessie's brother dies of consumption, and a seaside acquaintance is half killed by cardiac asthma. Now we have no objection to a reasonable amount of the tragic, but thus to fill a novel with it is simply repulsive, and is defective art. A good plot should be constructed like a Chinese puzzle, and, like a Chinese puzzle, taken to pieces. The Author of 'Behind the Veil' simply breaks the puzzle after cleverly putting it together. There can be but little good, and a very inferior land of interest in such melodramatic stories; we get too impatient even to be amused, and we cannot rank very highly the writer who chiefly depends upon them. The best parts of 'Behind the Veil' are its dialogues and letters—especially those of Jessie and Flo—which are very spirited and clever; as is also the schoolboy slang of Conrad. If the writer would trust himself to a novel of character he would, judging from these, succeed well. The characters themselves, too, are well conceived and discriminated, especially those of the mother and the two sisters. Noel Arlington is too galvanic to be natural or interesting. Beresford is better, and has two amusing foils in Smith, the pianoforte tuner, and Pinthorne, the curate—both of which are very clever caricatures. The literary power evinced is considerable; the love-making is well-nigh perfect, although we do not quite like a man of thirty-five and upwards marrying a girl of fifteen. The writer ought to do good work; and will, if he will only emancipate himself from a vicious school, depend less upon blue lights, and more upon natural human developments. His book is one in which, while the defects hinder perfect sympathy, the excellences are too distinctive to permit us to lay it aside.
Fernyhurst Court; an Every-day Story. By the Author of 'Stone Edge.' Strahan and Co.
If the author of 'Behind the Veil' has gone to the one extreme, the author of 'Fernyhurst Court' has gone to the other. Although her work belongs to the higher and more thoughtful school of character, and although it is written with the delicacy, beauty, and power that challenged attention and excited expectation in 'Stone Edge,' it has not movement enough to sustain its characters. The artistic structure is loose, although upon the artistic finish much careful pains is bestowed. More of the evolution of a story would have prevented the tendency to run into inordinate descriptions and to desultoriness which has sometimes wearied us. The book is a thoroughly good one—it could not be otherwise from the pen of its author—but like 'Benoni Blake,' upon which we have offered some criticisms in another place, it might have been better. Whatever the skill of touch and the effects of colour, the first great requisite of a picture is composition; so the first great work of a novel writer is a story—and story there is none in 'Fernyhurst Court.' Its studies are chiefly of women, and are apparently intended to exhibit the causes of wifely unfitness and motherly failure, in little defects of temper and unselfishness. Some half-dozen thoroughly disagreeable women are delineated—none of them wicked, but all unloveable through little naggings, or little selfishnesses. We confess that we could have dispensed with one-half of them, and could have desired the substitution of two or three contrasts like May. Milly is an improvement upon Dickens's Dora, but Lionel's chances of happiness are not great. The moral of the story is a wholesome one if the girls will but take it; but we confess we should like to see the authoress devoting her fine perception of character, and her great descriptive powers, to a work architecturally great, as well as artistically beautiful.
Her Title of Honour. By Holme Lee. Henry S. King.
This charming biographical fiction is constructed upon the outline of Henry Martyn's history, which it clothes with imaginative flesh and blood, incident, conversation, and motive; so far, that is, as the actual history does not supply these. The authoress has been very faithful to biographical fact; her religious sympathies, moreover, have enabled her to enter with great appreciation into the purposes and motives, the hopes and fears, the fluctuations and resolves of that heroic life. The result is an imaginative story that is probably more true to actual life than the ordinary biographies of Henry Martyn are; for imaginative genius—faithful, as here, to ascertained facts, even the minutest—can represent men and women much more truly and vividly than a mere common-place biographer who is restricted to literal fact. The conception of Eleanor's character, generous and loving, and yet falling short of needful heroism, is not only very fine, but is, perhaps, the true explanation of the great disappointment in Martyn's career. Personal and local names are changed so as to give greater freedom of treatment to the artist, but they are easily identified—Truro with Pengarvon, Salisbury with Craxon, Eleanor Trevelyan with Lydia Grenfell. We scarcely need say of a book of Holme Lee's writing that it is carefully finished, and redolent of a refined and beautiful soul. We have no more accomplished or conscientious literary artist. The fine touches of characterization of which the book is full, give it a great charm to cultivated minds. The broken-off purposes of Henry Martyn's life give novelty to the course and issue of the story, and significance to the moral which wise preachers often proclaim, that tangible achievement is not the greatest end or influence of a life. Henry Martyn may have applied great scholarship and refined intellectual powers to work, which ordinary literati would have done even better, but the consecration of ordinary powers would not have filled the Church and the world with such an influence.
Benoni Blake, M.D., Surgeon at Glenaldie. By the Author of 'Peasant Life in the North.' Strahan and Co.
'Peasant Life in the North' won for its author a respectful attention to whatever else he might publish. Few sketches, of contemporaneous writers, surpass or equal the racy characterizations and subtle human tenderness of 'Muckle Jock,' the mild Rhadamanthus doom of 'The Dainty Drainer,' or the perfect admixture of refined passion and rustic roughness of 'The Mason's Daughter.' 'Benoni Blake,' therefore, excited expectations which it will both gratify and disappoint. Let us have done with the grumbling first. Of course the subjective characteristics of this author were to be anticipated. No one could have looked for a novel in the style of Charles Lever or Wilkie Collins from him. Subtle analysis, quiet description, and a certain vein of sentimental and philosophical reflection and comment were to be expected. We will not say that in these rather than in crowded incident and dramatic representations the chief genius of fiction lies. Every man in his own order. 'Charles O'Malley' is, in its way, as good as 'The Transformations;' but we may say that the greatest achievement of genius is a just equilibrium between the two, and this the author of 'Benoni Blake' has not maintained. His work is a photograph rather than a story, a photograph of the kind that presents the same face in four aspects of it. The effect is like looking through an album containing only different photographs of the same person. The art is very beautiful, and the effect for a little while very charming, but one gets tired before the second volume, and wishes that 'Benoni Blake' would do something, or that somebody would do something to him. We get as tired of his simple inertia as he of the simple facile sweetness of Bessie's kisses. There is, moreover, a little too much about kissing; the sweetness of kisses is better suggested than described. The author has made the mistake of expanding a sketch, such as might have found a place in 'Peasant Life,' into a book—story it scarcely is—and he has done this by repetitions and reiterations of substantially the same situation and sentiments. This probably is an unconscious revolt against mere sensationalism, for the writer is clearly capable of spirited dialogue and of inventive construction. We are not, however, quite sure of the limit of this power. Neither the peasant dialogues nor the conversations of educated persons have much variety; the latter, indeed, if we except the brief episodes at Fanflare Lodge and of the flirtation with Miss Shawe, are almost wholly substituted by descriptions. We are told what the characters are—they do not unfold or exhibit themselves. The author has, however, a minute acquaintance with the provincial thought and speech of the Scottish peasantry; their racy humour, pawky shrewdness, and quaint prejudices, are admirably described. John, the minister's man, and Nannie, his female counterpart, are genuine types;—John's leal affection comes out very nobly in the proffer of his hoarded savings. So, in a somewhat higher grade, are Mr. Bowie, the 'paper minister,' and Miss Robison. The conversation between Mr. Bowie and John, as the latter drives home the former, is the raciest bit in the book; but all this runs in a very narrow groove. There are, too, certain mannerisms, which recall unpleasantly reminiscences of the way in which Thackeray buttonholes his readers and takes them into his confidence, which had better be avoided, as also a covert, although not ill-natured, vein of sarcasm, which leaves you in doubt whether the writer is in jest or earnest; in which again, the influence of Thackeray is a little too perceptible. Decidedly, too, the puff indirect, in reference to the opinion of the Saturday Review on 'Peasant Life in the North,' is in bad taste. Altogether, there is a lack of the ars celandi artem, a certain artificialness, and self-conscious mannerism that mars the effect of the book. The writer is apparently ashamed of his gentle sympathies, and tries to appear cynical.
It is easier, however, to speak of defects than of excellences, and the manifold and great excellences of 'Benoni Blake' alone justify us in saying so much about its defects. The former are a minute knowledge and love of nature, a keen insight into the fluctuations and inconsistencies of human nature, a sympathetic tenderness for its sorrows and loves and pure joys, hearty enjoyment of its humour and pathos, and a quiet realism, exquisitely flavoured with sentiment, which portrays life as an accomplished artist paints a portrait, with just that idealism which adorns character without falsifying it. The character of Benoni, gentle and good but not heroic, drifting into virtue rather than fighting for it; that of Bessie, tender, yet resolute; lowly yet great in self-sacrificing power; trustful as worship, yet sensitive and very refined in feeling, and capable of being helped, as her friend Miss Robison helps her—are both admirably done: so is the contrast between the two ministers, Mr. Blake and Mr. Bowie. There is, however, something unnatural and improbable in the relative feeling of father and son, and we are sorry that Miss Robison should fall into the arms of a selfish and vulgar fellow like Bowie. The Fanfare family are also well portrayed. Altogether there is great power and greater promise in 'Benoni Blake.' It exhibits the fine elements of Scottish life in its lowlier walks, with a degree of ability that equals that of the author of 'Robin Grey.' It is full of beautiful lights and shades, tender touches, and racy humour, great truthfulness, and delicate discrimination. It does not fulfil the promise of 'Peasant Life in the North,' but had not that appeared first, it would be the promise of much better things to come.