(Pall Mall Gazette, May 2, 1887.)
Of the three great Russian novelists of our time Tourgenieff is by far the finest artist. He has that spirit of exquisite selection, that delicate choice of detail, which is the essence of style; his work is entirely free from any personal intention; and by taking existence at its most fiery-coloured moments he can distil into a few pages of perfect prose the moods and pa.s.sions of many lives.
Count Tolstoi"s method is much larger, and his field of vision more extended. He reminds us sometimes of Paul Veronese, and, like that great painter, can crowd, without over-crowding, the giant canvas on which he works. We may not at first gain from his works that artistic unity of impression which is Tourgenieff"s chief charm, but once that we have mastered the details the whole seems to have the grandeur and the simplicity of an epic. Dostoieffski differs widely from both his rivals.
He is not so fine an artist as Tourgenieff, for he deals more with the facts than with the effects of life; nor has he Tolstoi"s largeness of vision and epic dignity; but he has qualities that are distinctively and absolutely his own, such as a fierce intensity of pa.s.sion and concentration of impulse, a power of dealing with the deepest mysteries of psychology and the most hidden springs of life, and a realism that is pitiless in its fidelity, and terrible because it is true. Some time ago we had occasion to draw attention to his marvellous novel Crime and Punishment, where in the haunt of impurity and vice a harlot and an a.s.sa.s.sin meet together to read the story of Dives and Lazarus, and the outcast girl leads the sinner to make atonement for his sin; nor is the book ent.i.tled Injury and Insult at all inferior to that great masterpiece. Mean and ordinary though the surroundings of the story may seem, the heroine Natasha is like one of the n.o.ble victims of Greek tragedy; she is Antigone with the pa.s.sion of Phaedra, and it is impossible to approach her without a feeling of awe. Greek also is the gloom of Nemesis that hangs over each character, only it is a Nemesis that does not stand outside of life, but is part of our own nature and of the same material as life itself. Aleosha, the beautiful young lad whom Natasha follows to her doom, is a second t.i.to Melema, and has all t.i.to"s charm and grace and fascination. Yet he is different. He would never have denied Balda.s.sare in the Square at Florence, nor lied to Romola about Tessa. He has a magnificent, momentary sincerity, a boyish unconsciousness of all that life signifies, an ardent enthusiasm for all that life cannot give. There is nothing calculating about him. He never thinks evil, he only does it. From a psychological point of view he is one of the most interesting characters of modem fiction, as from an artistic he is one of the most attractive. As we grow to know him he stirs strange questions for us, and makes us feel that it is not the wicked only who do wrong, nor the bad alone who work evil.
And by what a subtle objective method does Dostoieffski show us his characters! He never tickets them with a list nor labels them with a description. We grow to know them very gradually, as we know people whom we meet in society, at first by little tricks of manner, personal appearance, fancies in dress, and the like; and afterwards by their deeds and words; and even then they constantly elude us, for though Dostoieffski may lay bare for us the secrets of their nature, yet he never explains his personages away; they are always surprising us by something that they say or do, and keep to the end the eternal mystery of life.
Irrespective of its value as a work of art, this novel possesses a deep autobiographical interest also, as the character of Vania, the poor student who loves Natasha through all her sin and shame, is Dostoieffski"s study of himself. Goethe once had to delay the completion of one of his novels till experience had furnished him with new situations, but almost before he had arrived at manhood Dostoieffski knew life in its most real forms; poverty and suffering, pain and misery, prison, exile, and love, were soon familiar to him, and by the lips of Vania he has told his own story. This note of personal feeling, this harsh reality of actual experience, undoubtedly gives the book something of its strange fervour and terrible pa.s.sion, yet it has not made it egotistic; we see things from every point of view, and we feel, not that fiction has been trammelled by fact, but that fact itself has become ideal and imaginative. Pitiless, too, though Dostoieffski is in his method as an artist, as a man he is full of human pity for all, for those who do evil as well as for those who suffer it, for the selfish no less than for those whose lives are wrecked for others and whose sacrifice is in vain. Since Adam Bede and Le Pere Goriot no more powerful novel has been written than Insult and Injury.
Mr. Hardinge"s book Willow Garth deals, strangely enough, with something like the same idea, though the treatment is, of course, entirely different. A girl of high birth falls pa.s.sionately in love with a young farm-bailiff who is a sort of Arcadian Antinous and a very Ganymede in gaiters. Social difficulties naturally intervene, so she drowns her handsome rustic in a convenient pond. Mr. Hardinge has a most charming style, and, as a writer, possesses both distinction and grace. The book is a delightful combination of romance and satire, and the heroine"s crime is treated in the most picturesque manner possible.
Marcella Grace tells of modern life in Ireland, and is one of the best books Miss Mulholland has ever published. In its artistic reserve, and the perfect simplicity of its style, it is an excellent model for all lady-novelists to follow, and the scene where the heroine finds the man, who has been sent to shoot her, lying fever-stricken behind a hedge with his gun by his side, is really remarkable. Nor could anything be better than Miss Mulholland"s treatment of external nature. She never shrieks over scenery like a tourist, nor wearies us with sunsets like the Scotch school; but all through her book there is a subtle atmosphere of purple hills and silent moorland; she makes us live with nature and not merely look at it.
The accomplished auth.o.r.ess of Soap was once compared to George Eliot by the Court Journal, and to Carlyle by the Daily News, but we fear that we cannot compete with our contemporaries in these daring comparisons. Her present book is very clever, rather vulgar, and contains some fine examples of bad French.
As for A Marked Man, That Winter Night, and Driven Home, the first shows some power of description and treatment, but is sadly incomplete; the second is quite unworthy of any man of letters, and the third is absolutely silly. We sincerely hope that a few more novels like these will be published, as the public will then find out that a bad book is very dear at a shilling.
(1) Injury and Insult. By Fedor Dostoieffski. Translated from the Russian by Frederick Whishaw. (Vizetelly and Co.)
(2) The Willow Garth. By W. M. Hardinge. (Bentley and Son.)
(3) Marcella Grace. By Rosa Mulholland. (Macmillan and Co.)
(4) Soap. By Constance MacEwen. (Arrowsmith.)
(5) A Marked Man. By Faucet Streets. (Hamilton and Adams.)
(6) That Winter Night. By Robert Buchanan. (Arrowsmith.)
(7) Driven Home. By Evelyn Owen. (Arrowsmith.)
SOME NOVELS
(Sat.u.r.day Review, May 7, 1887.)
The only form of fiction in which real characters do not seem out of place is history. In novels they are detestable, and Miss Bayle"s Romance is entirely spoiled as a realistic presentation of life by the author"s attempt to introduce into her story a whole mob of modern celebrities and notorieties, including the Heir Apparent and Mr. Edmund Yates. The ident.i.ty of the latter personage is delicately veiled under the pseudonym of "Mr. Atlas, editor of the World," but the former appears as "The Prince of Wales" pur et simple, and is represented as spending his time yachting in the Channel and junketing at Homburg with a second- rate American family who, by the way, always address him as "Prince," and show in other respects an ignorance that even their ignorance cannot excuse. Indeed, His Royal Highness is no mere spectator of the story; he is one of the chief actors in it, and it is through his influence that the noisy Chicago belle, whose lack of romance gives the book its t.i.tle, achieves her chief social success. As for the conversation with which the Prince is credited, it is of the most amazing kind. We find him on one page gravely discussing the depression of trade with Mr. Ezra P.
Bayle, a shoddy American millionaire, who promptly replies, "Depression of fiddle-sticks, Prince"; in another pa.s.sage he naively inquires of the same shrewd speculator whether the thunderstorms and prairie fires of the West are still "on so grand a scale" as when he visited Illinois; and we are told in the second volume that, after contemplating the magnificent view from St. Ives he exclaimed with enthusiasm, "Surely Mr. Brett must have had a scene like this in his eye when he painted Britannia"s Realm?
I never saw anything more beautiful." Even Her Majesty figures in this extraordinary story in spite of the excellent aphorism ne touchez pas a la reine; and when Miss Alma J. Bayle is married to the Duke of Windsor"s second son she receives from the hands of royalty not merely the customary Cashmere shawl of Court tradition, but also a copy of Diaries in the Highlands inscribed "To _the_ Lady Plowden Eton, with the kindest wishes of Victoria R.I.", a mistake that the Queen, of all persons in the world, is the least likely to have committed. Perhaps, however, we are treating Miss Bayle"s Romance too seriously. The book has really no claim to be regarded as a novel at all. It is simply a society paragraph expanded into three volumes and, like most paragraphs of the kind, is in the worst possible taste. We are not by any means surprised that the author, while making free with the names of others, has chosen to conceal his own name; for no reputation could possibly survive the production of such silly, stupid work; but we must say that we are surprised that this book has been brought out by the Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen. We do not know what the duties attaching to this office are, but we should not have thought that the issuing of vulgar stories about the Royal Family was one of them.
From Heather Hills is very pleasant reading indeed. It is healthy without being affected; and though Mrs. Perks gives us many descriptions of Scotch scenery we are glad to say that she has not adopted the common chromo-lithographic method of those popular North British novelists who have never yet fully realised the difference between colour and colours, and who imagine that by emptying a paint box over every page they can bring before us the magic of mist and mountain, the wonder of sea or glen. Mrs. Perks has a grace and delicacy of touch that is quite charming, and she can deal with nature without either botanising or being blatant, which nowadays is a somewhat rare accomplishment. The interest of the story centres on Margaret Dalrymple, a lovely Scotch girl who is brought to London by her aunt, takes every one by storm and falls in love with young Lord Erinwood, who is on the brink of proposing to her when he is dissuaded from doing so by a philosophic man of the world who thinks that a woodland Artemis is a bad wife for an English peer, and that no woman who has a habit of saying exactly what she means can possibly get on in smart society. The would-be philosopher is ultimately hoist with his own petard, as he falls in love himself with Margaret Dalrymple, and as for the weak young hero he is promptly s.n.a.t.c.hed up, rather against his will, by a sort of Becky Sharp, who succeeds in becoming Lady Erinwood.
However, a convenient railway accident, the deus ex machina of nineteenth- century novels, carries Miss Norma Novello off; and everybody is finally made happy, except, of course, the philosopher, who gets only a lesson where he wanted to get love. There is just one part of the novel to which we must take exception. The whole story of Alice Morgan is not merely needlessly painful, but it is of very little artistic value. A tragedy may be the basis of a story, but it should never be simply a casual episode. At least, if it is so, it entirely fails to produce any artistic effect. We hope, too, that in Mrs. Perks"s next novel she will not allow her hero to misquote English poetry. This is a privilege reserved for Mrs. Malaprop.
A constancy that lasts through three volumes is often rather tedious, so that we are glad to make the acquaintance of Miss Lilian Ufford, the heroine of Mrs. Houston"s A Heart on Fire. This young lady begins by being desperately in love with Mr. Frank Thorburn, a struggling schoolmaster, and ends by being desperately in love with Colonel Dallas, a rich country gentleman who spends most of his time and his money in preaching a crusade against beer. After she gets engaged to the Colonel she discovers that Mr. Thorburn is in reality Lord Netherby"s son and heir, and for the moment she seems to have a true woman"s regret at having given up a pretty t.i.tle; but all ends well, and the story is brightly and pleasantly told. The Colonel is a middle-aged Romeo of the most impa.s.sioned character, and as it is his heart that is "on fire," he may serve as a psychological pendant to La Femme de Quarante Ans.
Mr. G. Manville Fenn"s A Bag of Diamonds belongs to the Drury Lane School of Fiction and is a sort of fireside melodrama for the family circle. It is evidently written to thrill Bayswater, and no doubt Bayswater will be thrilled. Indeed, there is a great deal that is exciting in the book, and the scene in which a kindly policeman a.s.sists two murderers to convey their unconscious victim into a four-wheeled cab, under the impression that they are a party of guests returning from a convivial supper in Bloomsbury, is quite excellent of its kind, and, on the whole, not too improbable, considering that shilling literature is always making demands on our credulity without ever appealing to our imagination.
The Great Hesper, by Mr. Frank Barrett, has at least the merit of introducing into fiction an entirely new character. The villain is Nyctalops, and, though we are not prepared to say that there is any necessary connection between Nyctalopy and crime, we are quite ready to accept Mr. Barrett"s picture of Jan Van Hoeck as an interesting example of the modern method of dealing with life. For, Pathology is rapidly becoming the basis of sensational literature, and in art, as in politics, there is a great future for monsters. What a Nyctalops is we leave Mr.
Barrett to explain. His novel belongs to a cla.s.s of book that many people might read once for curiosity but n.o.body could read a second time for pleasure.
A Day after the Fair is an account of a holiday tour through Scotland taken by two young barristers, one of whom rescues a pretty girl from drowning, falls in love with her, and is rewarded for his heroism by seeing her married to his friend. The idea of the book is not bad, but the treatment is very unsatisfactory, and combines the triviality of the tourist with the dulness of good intentions.
"Mr. Winter" is always amusing and audacious, though we cannot say that we entirely approve of the names he gives to his stories. Bootle"s Baby was a masterpiece, but Houp-la was a terrible t.i.tle, and That Imp is not much better. The book, however, is undoubtedly clever, and the Imp in question is not a Nyctalops nor a specimen for a travelling museum, but a very pretty girl who, because an officer has kissed her without any serious matrimonial intentions, exerts all her fascinations to bring the unfortunate Lovelace to her feet and, having succeeded in doing so, promptly rejects him with a virtuous indignation that is as delightful as it is out of place. We must confess that we have a good deal of sympathy for "Driver" Dallas, of the Royal Horse, who suffers fearful agonies at what he imagines is a heartless flirtation on the part of the lady of his dreams; but the story is told from the Imp"s point of view, and as such we must accept it. There is a very brilliant description of a battle in the Soudan, and the account of barrack life is, of course, admirable. So admirable indeed is it that we hope that "Mr. Winter" will soon turn his attention to new topics and try to handle fresh subjects. It would be sad if such a clever and observant writer became merely the garrison hack of literature. We would also earnestly beg "Mr. Winter" not to write foolish prefaces about unappreciative critics; for it is only mediocrities and old maids who consider it a grievance to be misunderstood.
(1) Miss Bayle"s Romance: A Story of To-Day. (Bentley and Son, Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen.)
(2) From Heather Hills. By Mrs. J. Hartley Perks. (Hurst and Blackett.)
(3) A Heart on Fire. By Mrs. Houston. (F. V. White and Co.)
(4) A Bag of Diamonds. By George Manville Fenn. (Ward and Downey.)
(5) The Great Hesper. By Frank Barrett. (Ward and Downey.)
(6) A Day after the Fair. By William Cairns. (Swan Sonnenschein and Co.)
(7) That Imp. By John Strange Winter, Author of Booties" Baby, etc. (F.
V. White and Co.)
THE POETS" CORNER--III
(Pall Mall Gazette, May 30, 1887.)
Such a pseudonym for a poet as "Glenessa" reminds us of the good old days of the Della Cruscans, but it would not be fair to attribute Glenessa"s poetry to any known school of literature, either past or present.
Whatever qualities it possesses are entirely its own. Glenessa"s most ambitious work, and the one that gives the t.i.tle to his book, is a poetic drama about the Garden of Eden. The subject is undoubtedly interesting, but the execution can hardly be said to be quite worthy of it. Devils, on account of their inherent wickedness, may be excused for singing--
Then we"ll rally--rally--rally-- Yes, we"ll rally--rally O!--
but such scenes as--
Enter ADAM.
ADAM (excitedly). Eve, where art thou?
EVE (surprised). Oh!
ADAM (in astonishment). Eve! my G.o.d, she"s there Beside that fatal tree;
or--