To one person at least, and to one only, this volume of Topics is likely to be of lasting interest. That person is the author. The Topics are short articles on a variety of subjects which have appeared from month to month in Scribner’s magazine. They are of about the average length of an ordinary newspaper article, and of about equal depth. They lack the newspaper liveliness, however, and the English is in great part of that slipshod style that is mistaken by so many nowadays for an evidence of careless strength. “Familiarly didactic” is the character that Dr. Holland in his preface seems to claim for this and others of his books, and the very phrase stamps the man. The book is tiresome, prosy, and fussy. Any one of the articles is too long for its purpose; what, then, must a volume of them be?
Dr. Holland is apparently a Christian or nothing. He is for ever prating about “the church” and attacking “the world.” It is to be feared that his Christianity is of a very vague character. His zeal is unfortunately without knowledge. He is constantly making grave mistakes with the most solemn confidence in his own infallibility, and thunders away on every kind of subject with a “trenchant ignorance” that would be amusing did it not touch such grave matters. Dr. Holland may have the best intentions in the world, but he would do well to weigh his words a little before undertaking to champion “the church.” What particular
“church” is he for ever defending? The Christian Church, he would doubtless reply. But which is the Christian Church? This is a question that Dr. Holland is quite capable of undertaking to decide in a future “Topic,” and he would do not only his own readers but the world at large infinite service by making this matter clear once for all.
We are quite justified in putting this question to Dr. Holland; for everybody knows what a Catholic means when he speaks of “the church.” But in Dr. Holland’s “church” it is doubtful whether Catholics are allowed a place. At least, we should judge so from the manner in which he treats of them whenever their name occurs in the Topics.
Linked Lives. By Lady Gertrude Douglas. New York: Benziger Brothers. 1876.
The English Catholic journals greeted this story with such an unusual flourish of trumpets that we were led to expect something extraordinary in the way of novel-writing. It is extraordinary in no sense. It is not even extraordinarily bad. It is eminently dull, altogether commonplace, and only saved from utter insipidity by here and there an indication of real power.
Of course it relies for its main interest on the good old English Catholic story-theme—conversion. To relieve the monotony of this subject, probably, the author sprinkled the narrative with dashes of what is meant for sensation. She takes us to the dens of thieves, to the reformatory, the prison, the court of justice. Such scenes may be rendered exciting—by a Dickens or a Victor Hugo. We are very happy to see that Lady Gertrude Douglas is not at all at home among them. All this portion of the book reads pretty much like an ordinary police report, and all the desire in the world on the reader’s part cannot invest Katie McKay or any of her companions with even a touch of the interest that Dickens threw around Nancy Sykes. Such themes should not be touched at all unless they can be made elevating. It takes a very experienced, strong, yet tender hand to bare the ulcers and foul sores of society. The process is a most delicate one. If well done, it excites pity, remorse, sorrow, indignation, that such things can be among Christian
peoples; if ill done, it is revolting and only excites disgust.
Great pains have been bestowed on the delineation of the character of Mabel Forrester, and not without success. Indeed, she and her brother Guy, who is killed off too early, are almost the only interesting persons in the volume. By the way, what a lugubrious story it is! Everybody is constantly down at the mouth. Poor Guy is killed at a yacht-race, which he has just won. Katie McKay throws herself into the sea with her babe, which has been chloroformed (!) by Katie’s sister; and we could almost wish that Katie had been left in the sea. She is dragged out, however, to receive two years’ imprisonment. The rascal whom she married dies in prison. Her sister dies in her bed, but with a strong intimation that she is likely to be consigned to the lower regions. There are several other deaths of minor consequence; and finally, after being induced to accompany Mabel on a voyage to Australia, to assist at her wedding with her elderly lover, Hugh Fortescue—who, of course, is in the last stage of consumption at the time—the vessel takes fire and Mabel perishes. Equally of course, Hugh, as soon as he receives the news, dies also, “aged fifty-three,” as the tombstone erected to his memory in Australia informs us. Surely, after all this, we may say with Macbeth that we have “supped full of horrors,” and, like him also, we feel none the better for them.
A great fault with the book, too, is that the fate of every one is foreshadowed early in the story, and the recurrence of such remarks as “But we must not anticipate,” “But of that anon,” is peculiarly exasperating when the whole murder is out in the very sentence that occasions such a remark. The convert-making is far too labored, and there is too much of it.