Like unto Like. By Sherwood Bonner. (Library of American Fiction.) New York: Harper & Brothers.
Sherwood Bonner has been singularly happy in her choice of a subject for this, her first novel. She has broken new ground on that Southern soil which seemed already for literary purposes wellnigh worn out, and she has touched upon a period in the struggle between North and South which, so far as we know, has been little treated by novelists. The antagonists are represented not in the smoke of battle, but at that critical and awkward moment when the first steps toward reconciliation are being made. A proud but sociable little Mississippi town is shown in the act of half-reluctantly opening its doors to the officers of a couple of Federal regiments stationed within its bounds. The situation is portrayed with much spirit and humor, as well as with the most perfect good-humor. Thoroughly Southern as the novel is, it is not narrowly so: its pictures of Southern society are drawn from within, and show its writer's sympathy with Southern feeling, yet its tone, even in touching on the most tender spots, is entirely dispassionate, and at the same time free from any apparent effort to be so.
The first chapter introduces us to a triad of charming girls, whose careless talk soon turns upon the soldiers' expected arrival in Yariba and the proper reception to be given them by the Yariba damsels. Betty Page, Mary Barton and Blythe Herndon are, in a sense, typical girls, and represent the three orders in which nearly all girlhood may be classified—namely, frivolous girls, good girls, and clever girls or girls with ideas. Ideas are represented by Blythe Herndon, whose outspoken verdict in favor of tolerance and forgetfulness of the past draws upon her the patriotic indignation of Miss Betty Page. How long the fair disputants preserve the jewel of consistency forms the motif of the book. Betty dances and flirts, neglects her loyal young Southern lover—who, we hope, is consoled by Mary—and finally surrenders to a handsome moustache and the Union with a happy unconsciousness of any abandonment of her principles. Blythe, with her ardent nature and youthful attitude of intolerance toward intolerance, is easily attracted by the intellectual freedom which appears to open before her in the conversation of an enthusiastic New England radical. Her mind is, however, not wholly thrown off its balance by this vision of culture: she awakens to the fact that the breach is wider than she had at first dreamed, and shrinks from the sacrifice not only of prejudice, but of first principles and affections, which is demanded of her. Lovers who are separated by hereditary or political strife have ever been a favorite theme with poet and romancer. In the majority of instances these unhappy beings have regarded the barrier between them as a useless obstacle erected by a perverse Fate in the way of their happiness. But Mr. Roger Ellis adheres with narrow obstinacy to the least article of his broad political creed, without a particle of consideration for the different one in which Blythe has been nurtured. He flourishes the American flag in his conversation in true stump-orator style, kisses black babies in the street—when, as Betty Page remarks, no man was ever known to kiss a white baby if he could help it—and refuses to eat without the company at table of a little black protégé.
Plot there is none in Like unto Like, and of incident very little. Light, often sparkling, conversations and charming bits of description follow each other in ready succession like beads upon a string. Lack of incident is atoned for by charm of writing, and in the vivacity of the scenes the reader disregards the slenderness of the connecting thread, or perhaps forgets to look for it. The style is easy and pleasant, while free from the slips to which "easy writers" are so prone. Of bright, witty sayings a number could easily be gathered as samples, but the readers would still have to be referred to the book for many more. Perhaps the main charm of Like unto Like lies in its description of the quaint life in Southern provincial towns, where the people "all talk to each other as if they were members of one family," where married ladies are still called by their friends "Miss Kate," "Miss Janey," or "Miss Ada," and where, "when a youth and maiden promise to marry each other, they become possessed immediately with a wild desire to conceal their engagement from all the world." There clings to the book a suggestion of that Southern accent which in the mouth of a pretty woman has such a piquant foreign sound.
His Heart's Desire: A Novel. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co.
We can complain of no lack of plot or paucity of incidents in His Heart's Desire. Were the material less ably handled we should suggest an unnecessary redundancy, but we hesitate to pronounce superfluous anything which is so exactly fitted, so neatly dove-tailed into the main structure, as is each incident and character in the present novel. About a dozen individual and more or less finished personages contribute their life-histories to the book, yet each of these lives has some bearing upon that of the heroine, Nora St. John, and notwithstanding these intricacies the plot never becomes confused. It has been too firmly grasped by the author's mind to be a puzzle to the reader's. Its various ramifications are never allowed to get into a "snarl:" the mystery all turns upon a single point which we will not spoil the reader's pleasure by mentioning, and, arrived at the last pages, the various threads of the story unwind themselves easily and naturally like a single coil. The same skill is displayed in the management of the characters. Though drawn with unequal power, many of them being seized with much vividness, whilst others must be accounted failures, they are well grouped. Numerous as the figures are, they never crowd or jostle each other, and elaborated as they are in many cases, all are subordinate to that of Nora, whose character and story stand out in a strong relief not easy to obtain upon so varied a background. This character is finely conceived and drawn with real power, being impressive by the very truth of the rendering, for she is not invested with any strikingly heroic qualities. A strong, passionate nature made cold by suffering and the constant struggle to keep the secret of her one season of passion from rising again to confront her—a woman of forty, who has no longer any illusions or pleasure, in whose character intense pride is the only motive-power left, and even pride is weary of its loneliness and the assaults made upon it—Nora excites interest, and even pity, by her position and by the aspect of a strong nature under subdued but real suffering. In the later pages of the book, and notably in the scene with Mr. Sistare, in which revelations are made by both, the changes gradual or sudden in her feelings and thought are portrayed with the delicacy of light and shade, the picturesqueness and self-forgetfulness, with which a fine actress renders a part. This dramatic quality is perhaps the most striking trait in His Heart's Desire. Many of its scenes are intensely dramatic, full of passion, striking in situation, and showing a rather rare accomplishment—that of conducting a dialogue which shall be equally brilliant on both sides without resembling a monologue.
In praising this novel so highly we do not forget its faults. But, though perhaps as numerous as its merits, they are by no means equal to them in importance. Something of naturalness and simplicity has been sacrificed to the exigences of the plot; and, while the higher truth is adhered to in the principal scenes and characters, some of the minor ones appear to us rather highly colored. By distributing the fatal gift of beauty with a less lavish hand the author might, we think, have subdued this color: a few commonplace figures would have added to the naturalness of the scene.
Sensational the book may be pronounced from a glance through its chain of incidents, yet neither by its tone nor its writing does it belong to the class which we call sensational. Its tone is earnest and sincere, grave social questions being handled with a purity and feeling which makes the book, in spite of its apparent unconsciousness of purpose, a distinctly moral one.