When Ghost Meets Ghost, by William De Morgan. [Henry Holt and Company, New York.]
Whatever else I may say about De Morgan’s new book, I absolutely refuse to tell the number of its pages. Every other criticism begins or ends with this uninteresting fact, and usually adds that it makes no difference how long it is, since the writer’s charm pervades it all. But it does make a difference, and it is too trite to say we are so hurried and nervous and given over to frivolity nowadays that we are unable to read Dickens and Thackeray and Scott and De Morgan. There is a great deal more to read, and a great deal more to do and to think about, than ever there was in Thackeray’s day. And if we are going to spend our time reading countless pages (I very nearly told how many, after all!) we want to be sure it is more worth while than anything else we can be doing, or thinking, or reading.
However, one can’t say very well that he greatly admires a stork, or would if he had a short beak and short legs. De Morgan’s style is his own, and he will tell the story his own way, though we all have a quarrel with him for leaving the most interesting bits to a short “Pendrift” at the end. Did Given’s lover contemplate taking his East Indian poison when the newspapers announced that she was to marry an Austrian noble? Think of cutting that episode off in a few words, while an entire chapter is devoted to a “shortage of mud” for little Dave and Dolly, who were making a dyke in the street! But then, De Morgan doesn’t know how to stop when he begins to talk of children. How he loves them, and all other helpless creatures! He can’t speak even of kittens without a touch of tenderness:
Mrs. Lapping explained that she was using it (the basket) to convey a kitten, born in her establishment, to Miss Druitt at thirty-four opposite, who had expressed anxiety to possess it. It was this kitten’s expression of impatience with its position that had excited Mrs. Riley’s curiosity. “Why don’t ye carry the little sowl across in your hands, me dyurr?” she said, not unreasonably, for it was only a stone’s throw. Mrs. Topping added that this was no common kitten, but one of preternatural activities and possessed of diabolical, tentacular powers of entanglement. “I would not undertake,” said she, “to get it across the road, ma’am, only catching hold. Nor if I got it safe across, to onhook it, without tearing.” Mrs. Riley was obliged to admit the wisdom of the Janus basket. She knew how difficult it is to be even with a kitten.
It is bits like this that make Mr. De Morgan’s story so long, and it is bits like this that reconcile us to its length. I believe most readers won’t care greatly whether the two poor old sisters who have been separated so many years ever do meet again. There is no feeling of climax when they do—merely relief that the thing has finally been put across. It was beginning to look as if it never would happen; and though the reader himself, as I say, doesn’t greatly care, he can see that De Morgan does; he has apparently been doing his best to bring it about, but the cantankerous ones just wouldn’t let him.
On the other hand, who can help loving Given o’ the Towers—all sweetness, beauty, and light? Only—isn’t she really more of a twentieth-century heroine than a Victorian young lady, with her crisp decisiveness and air of being most ably able to look out for herself? Truly Victorian, however, are our “slow couple”—Miss Dickenson and Mr. Pellew. Miss Dickenson is thirty-six, and, by all Victorian standards, quite out of the running. De Morgan is extremely apologetic for allowing her to have a romance at this belated hour—her charms faded and gone. But we are betting quite heavily on Miss Dickenson’s chances for happiness with the Hon. Mr. Pellew. The two were “good gossips,” and would always have topics of interest in common.
The Pendrift at the end—quite the most fascinating part of the book—tells us of the daughter of this union Cicely, by this time sixteen years old.
“You know,” says the girl, Cis,—who is new and naturally knows things, and can tell her parents,—“you know there is never the slightest reason for apprehension as long as there is no delusion. Even then we have to discriminate carefully between fixed and permanent delusions and——”
“Shut up, Mouse!” says her father. “What’s that striking?”...
The young lady says, “Well, I got it all out of a book.”