| [5] | Alleghany. |
The Ancient Régime: A Novel. By G. P. R. James, Esq. 2 vols. Harper and Brothers.
“Stale, flat, and unprofitable” are the novels of Mr. James, and of all his novels the Ancient Régime is the most flat. We have just flung down the book, wondering how any man could, “sanâ mente,” in a sane mind, publish two volumes so very common-place. Yet Mr. James has done it, once and again, and yet again, and—God help us—seems determined to do it, so long as he can find a publisher.
We do not say that the novels of James are unreadable, paradoxical as it may seem, after what we have written. They are, on the contrary, pleasant, often instructive. In some respects they are even well written: if they were not so written, we should pass them in silence; but when a man of talent persists in writing such common-place affairs as Corse de Leon and the Ancient Régime, we feel bound to caution the public against reading them.
In reviewing the last novel of this author, we took occasion to comment on his repetition of himself; and had not but a bare six months elapsed since the publication of that article, we should have thought, that he had commenced this work with our criticism before him; for the whole conception of the Ancient Régime—according to the preface—is essentially different from that of Mr. James’ former romances. To do him justice, he seems to have set out intending to write something really new. But a dog that has once tasted blood is forever killing sheep,—and our novelist, after the first few chapters of the work, runs into all his old habits. Indeed, had he not told us in set phrases that his object was to show the gradual changes of a female mind from infancy to womanhood, and that too while she was in the peculiar position of a ward of a man to whom she bore no relationship: had he not told us this—we say—and added that he had in the Ancient Régime attempted a new and more gentle style, we should have divined neither the one fact nor the other.
There is too much clap-trap in the work before us. Most novelists are contented if their hero saves the life of his mistress once in the space of two orthodox volumes. But James thinks this entirely too little. His heroine seems put up like a ten-pin, only to be bowled at; for her life is preserved once from a wolf—once from a robber—and once from an assassin—and beside this, her honour is kept in jeopardy, as a kind of running commentary, through the whole book. We are tempted to say with Titmouse, “ ’Pon honour—most uncommon luck.” Then, too, everything happens, not as it would in life, but just as it ought to happen. Such a chain of fortuitous circumstances, following each other link by link, we venture to say, author never imagined, since the old romances of chivalry gave up the ghost. The deserted babe passes into the very hands to which it should go—the supposed father gets a place in the police, the very thing for all hands—the young lady when grown up falls in love with the son of the only man living who knows her parentage—the king is frustrated in meeting Annette, until after Du Barry has given him a new object of pursuit—the Baron de Cajore is arrested at the very instant he is arresting the hero—Ernest de Nogent is rescued in the park at Maupay just as he is about to be stabbed from behind—and last of all, the assassin de Cajore is killed off at the end, in the very nick of time, and when all the actors are conveniently assembled to look on, at a nice little tea-party in the forest. Nothing, indeed, is done naturally: everything is brought about by luck.
In the second place, the characters of the Ancient Régime are only new editions—by no means improved ones—of the dramatis personæ of James’ former novels. Some wicked wag said that the old dramatists wanted only a king, a fool, a woman, and a villain, to make a tragedy, and Mr. James seems to have taken up the joke as serious. He is like a wax-work keeper: he has one figure, which, by dint of changing the dress, passes for everything under the sun. His heroes and heroines are never dissimilar: he has always one noble and one poorer rogue: he never forgets to bring in a king or a queen, or both; and he fills up the by-play with a few supernumeraries, who talk a great deal and do a very little. If you read one of his novels, you read, in fact, all. Then there are perils, rescues, a duel or two, generally a trial, and now and then a sprinkling of battles, ambuscades, and the like. Sometimes the hobby is one thing and sometimes another, but he never mixes the draught without putting in a little of all the ingredients. In his last novel his fancy ran on battles—in this one, trials appear to rule the roost. To sum up this head, Mr. James seems to be like a horse in a mill, who, though every time he goes his rounds, may kick up his heels after a new variety, never gets out of the same beaten track, or rises above the same humdrum pace.
In the third place, there is no ingenuity in the plot of the Ancient Régime. You see, at once, not only how all is to end, but you penetrate into every detail of the plot. By the time you have read thirty pages, you know that Annette is not Pierre Morin’s daughter—that the Abbé is the unknown companion of the murderers—that Pierre Morin is the person who warns Castelneau to leave Paris—and that the sign which induces the Abbé to obey, is the discovery of his own seal, which had been lost at the door of Fiteau’s shop, impressed on the letter of warning. A plot, so loosely contrived, wants interest; and if you go through the book at all, it is with labor.
But even that very respectable gentleman, who unfortunately is provided with a tail, is not, according to the popular rumour, without his good qualities; and Mr. James, despite all we have said, is yet a writer of talent—talent running a muck, we contend—but still talent. More than this—he is a historian; not a mere chronicler, but a historian. He knows the manners, costume, and general spirit of the ages of which he writes, and his novels may, so far forth as they embody this knowledge, be read with interest. This, too, is the secret of his continued success in despite of his many faults. This, too, is why he is called the great historical novelist of the age, though in painting accurately the characters of his leading personages, such as Richelieu, Philip Augustus, &c., he is far beneath Grattan—a writer, by the bye, less known in this country than he deserves to be. In another thing James is deficient as a writer of historical romance—he does not enter, as fully as he ought, into the spirit of the age. Here Bulwer, in his Rienzi, has shown himself superior to the author of Richelieu; to say nothing of Scott, who, whatever license he took with particular personages, always depicted vividly the spirit of the age of which he wrote.