Idle Hours in a Library

by William Henry Hudson

As the title indicates, this volume consists of seven separate stories—“The Fair Hypocrite,” “The Physician’s Stratagem,” “The Wife’s Resentment,” “The Husband’s Resentment” (in two examples), “The Happy Fugitives,” and “The Perjured Beauty.” The keynote of the whole collection is clearly struck in the following passage from the first-mentioned of the tales:—

“Of all those passions which may be said to tyrannize over the heart of man, love is not only the most violent, but the most persuasive.... A lover esteems nothing difficult in the pursuit of his desires. It is then that fame, honor, chastity, and glory have no longer their due estimation, even in the most virtuous breast. When love truly seizes the heart, it is like a malignant fever which thence disperses itself through all the sensible parts; the poison preys upon the vitals, and is only extinguished by death; or by as fatal a cure, the accomplishment of its own desires.”

The “love” shadowed forth in these sentences is that which dominates each of the seven “Examples” in this little book, which are thus only variations on a single persistent theme. It is the merest animal passion—passion unrefined by sentiment, uncolored by emotion; the love of Etheridge and Wycherley. Upon the gratification of this in a licit, or, as frequently happens, in an illicit way, the plot is, with the monotony of a modern French novel, everywhere made to turn. The heroes of her stories are all, like Mr. Slye, in the author’s rather amusing sketch, the “Stage-Coach Journey to Exeter,” “naturally amorous”; her heroines, like the Fair Princess in “The Happy Fugitives,” are one and all “born under an amorous constellation,” and like her, are forever “floating on the tempestuous sea of passion, guided by a master who is too often pleased with the shipwreck of those whom he conducts.” So violent are the experiences portrayed that we can hardly avoid the thought that Mrs. Manley must have adhered in practice to the maxim of “Astrophel and Stella”—“Look in thy heart, and write,”—and must have gone straight to some of the stormiest episodes of her own career for the pictures which she gives us. Passion and gratification—these, then, are the regular ingredients of her stories. Of the larger and finer influence of love; of its strengthening and ennobling power; of the way in which its subtle mastery will work through life,—

“Not only to keep down the base in man,

But teach high thought, and amiable words,

And courtliness, and the desire of fame,

And love of truth, and all that makes a man,”—

of all these things, familiar enough, fortunately, to the reader of modern fiction, we have scarcely a trace. So far as the influence of love is shown at all, it is consistently shown as a debasing influence. This point, clearly set forth in the quotation already made, may be illustrated from the record of the writer’s own life. In the “History of Rivella,” she tells us that, when quite a girl, she was infatuated with a handsome young soldier who, when the gaming-tables were brought out, found, to his embarrassment, that he had no money to play with. Noticing this, Rivella went to her father’s drawer, stole some money, and gave it to him. Now, mark the author’s commentary upon the action: “Being perfectly just,” she says, “by nature, principle, and education, nothing but love, and that in a high degree, could have made her otherwise.” Here we have, then, a fair expression of the kind of love which is presented to us in these “Examples.” A despotic animal appetite, unchecked in its fierce, impulsive play by any nobler considerations whatever, it drives human nature downward, captive and slave to the “fury passions” which civilization has been struggling to bring under partial control.

These seven stories, therefore, are anything but pleasant reading, unless they be, like certain incidents referred to in the “New Atalantis,” “pleasant ... to the ears of the vicious.” It is not only that they are repulsive because of the undisguised licentiousness that everywhere prevails in them; they are occasionally disgusting on account of the large part played by the merely horrible. So intimately related are unemotionalized passion and utter brutality, that, as might be expected, here, where the one is so conspicuous, the other has considerable place. The revenge taken by the woman upon her worthless husband in “The Wife’s Resentment” (Did recollection of her own wrongs add bitterness to Rivella’s pen, we may well wonder?) may be cited as an example of this. Don Roderigo, a Spanish gentleman, after trying for fifteen months to seduce a poor girl named Violenta, marries her in a moment of thoughtlessness, but keeps the marriage a secret from his friends. Before long he is forced by his family into a second and public union with a wealthy heiress. The news of his inconstancy fills Violenta with delirious passion; and nothing will appease her but revenge, sudden and complete. She decoys Roderigo into her apartment, murders him while he is asleep, and, not contented with this, deliberately tears out his eyes and mangles “his body all over with an infinite number of gashes” before throwing it out into the street. And what is particularly noteworthy is, that the narrator herself does not seem to be in the least impressed by the loathsome details accumulated in her description. She reports the incident as though it were a matter of course, and quietly tells us that when Violenta was brought to justice for her crime, the duke, the magistrates, and all the spectators were amazed “at the courage and magnanimity of the maid, and that one of so little rank should have so great a sense of her dishonor.”

Unquestionably the most pleasing of all these stories, alike from a literary and from a moral standpoint, is “The Happy Fugitives,” a simple tale, containing comparatively little to which exception could be taken. The plots of “The Physician’s Stratagem” and “The Perjured Beauty,” on the other hand, are too hideous to be reproduced. As a whole, the book is desperately dull and tiresome; for the pornographic horrors of its pages are unredeemed by any excellencies of style. Its only interest for us here, therefore, is an historic one; and about this side of the matter, we shall have a general word or two to say later on.