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 passion 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
assassin 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 entitled 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 noble victims of Greek
tragedy; she is Antigone with the passion 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 Tito Melema, and has all Tito's
charm and grace and fascination. Yet he is different. He would never
have denied Baldassare 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 passion, 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 passionately 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 authoress 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
(Saturday 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 identity 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 title,
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 passage 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 snatched 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 title; but all ends well, and the story is
brightly and pleasantly told. The Colonel is a middle-aged Romeo of the
most impassioned 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 assists 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 class of book that many
people might read once for curiosity but nobody 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 title, 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 title 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 God, she's there
Beside that fatal tree;
or--
Enter ADAM and EVE.
EVE (in astonishment). Well, is not this surprising?
ADAM (distracted). It is--
seem to belong rather to the sphere of comedy than to that of serious
verse. Poor Glenessa! the gods have not made him poetical, and we hope
he will abandon his wooing of the muse. He is fitted, not for better,
but for other things.
Vortigern and Rowena is a cantata about the Britons and the Danes. There
is a Druid priestess who sings of Cynthia and Endymion, and a chorus of
jubilant Vikings. It is charmingly printed, and as a libretto for music
quite above the average.
As truly religious people are resigned to everything, even to mediocre
poetry, there is no reason at all why Madame Guyon's verses should not be
popular with a large section of the community. Their editor, Mr. Dyer,
has reprinted the translations Cowper made for Mr. Bull, added some
versions of his own and written a pleasing preface about this gentle
seventeenth-century saint whose life was her best, indeed her only true
poem.
Mr. Pierce has discovered a tenth muse and writes impassioned verses to
the Goddess of Chess whom he apostrophises as 'Sublime Caissa'! Zukertort
and Steinitz are his heroes, and he is as melodious on mates as he is
graceful on gambits. We are glad to say, however, that he has other
subjects, and one of his poems beginning:
Cedar boxes deeply cut,
China bowls of quaint device,
Heap'd with rosy leaves and spice,
Violets in old volumes shut--
is very dainty and musical.
Mr. Clifford Harrison is well known as the most poetic of our reciters,
but as a writer himself of poetry he is not so famous. Yet his little
volume In Hours of Leisure contains some charming pieces, and many of the
short fourteen-line poems are really pretty, though they are very
defective in form. Indeed, of form Mr. Harrison is curiously careless.
Such rhymes as 'calm' and 'charm,' 'baize' and 'place,' 'jeu' and 'knew,'
are quite dreadful, while 'operas' and 'stars,' 'Gautama' and 'afar' are
too bad even for Steinway Hall. Those who have Keats's genius may borrow
Keats's cockneyisms, but from minor poets we have a right to expect some
regard to the ordinary technique of verse. However, if Mr. Harrison has
not always form, at least he has always feeling. He has a wonderful
command over all the egotistic emotions, is quite conscious of the
artistic value of remorse, and displays a sincere sympathy with his own
moments of sadness, playing upon his moods as a young lady plays upon the
piano. Now and then we come across some delicate descriptive touches,
such as
The cuckoo knew its latest day had come,
And told its name once more to all the hills,
and whenever Mr. Harrison writes about nature he is certainly pleasing
and picturesque but, as a rule, he is over-anxious about himself and
forgets that the personal expression of joy or sorrow is not poetry,
though it may afford excellent material for a sentimental diary.
The daily increasing class of readers that likes unintelligible poetry
should study AEonial. It is in many ways a really remarkable production.
Very fantastic, very daring, crowded with strange metaphor and clouded by
monstrous imagery, it has a sort of turbid splendour about it, and should
the author some day add meaning to his music he may give us a true work
of art. At present he hardly realises that an artist should be
articulate.
Seymour's Inheritance is a short novel in blank verse. On the whole, it
is very harmless both in manner and matter, but we must protest against
such lines as
And in the windows of his heart the blinds
Of happiness had been drawn down by Grief,
for a simile committing suicide is always a depressing spectacle. Some
of the other poems are so simple and modest that we hope Mr. Ross will
not carry out his threat of issuing a 'more pretentious volume.'
Pretentious volumes of poetry are very common and very worthless.
Mr. Brodie's Lyrics of the Sea are spirited and manly, and show a certain
freedom of rhythmical movement, pleasant in days of wooden verse. He is
at his best, however, in his sonnets. Their architecture is not always
of the finest order but, here and there, one meets with lines that are
graceful and felicitous.
Like silver swallows on a summer morn
Cutting the air with momentary wings,
is pretty, and on flowers Mr. Brodie writes quite charmingly. The only
thoroughly bad piece in the book is The Workman's Song. Nothing can be
said in favour of
Is there a bit of blue, boys?
Is there a bit of blue?
In heaven's leaden hue, boys?
'Tis hope's eye peeping through . . .
for optimism of this kind is far more dispiriting than Schopenhauer or
Hartmann at their worst, nor are there really any grounds for supposing
that the British workman enjoys third-rate poetry.
(1) The Discovery and Other Poems. By Glenessa. (National Publishing
Co.)
(2) Vortigern and Rowena: A Dramatic Cantata. By Edwin Ellis Griffin.
(Hutchings and Crowsley.)
(3) The Poems of Madame de la Mothe Guyon. Edited and arranged by the
Rev. A. Saunders Dyer, M.A. (Bryce and Son.)
(4) Stanzas and Sonnets. By J. Pierce, M.A. (Longmans, Green and Co.)
(5) In Hours of Leisure. By Clifford Harrison. (Kegan Paul.)
(6) AEonial. By the Author of The White Africans. (Elliot Stock.)
(7) Seymour's Inheritance. By James Ross. (Arrowsmith.)
(8) Lyrics of the Sea. By E. H. Brodie. (Bell and Sons.)
MR. PATER'S IMAGINARY PORTRAITS
(Pall Mall Gazette, June 11, 1887.)
To convey ideas through the medium of images has always been the aim of
those who are artists as well as thinkers in literature, and it is to a
desire to give a sensuous environment to intellectual concepts that we
owe Mr. Pater's last volume. For these Imaginary or, as we should prefer
to call them, Imaginative Portraits of his, form a series of philosophic
studies in which the philosophy is tempered by personality, and the
thought shown under varying conditions of mood and manner, the very
permanence of each principle gaining something through the change and
colour of the life through which it finds expression. The most
fascinating of all these pictures is undoubtedly that of Sebastian Van
Storck. The account of Watteau is perhaps a little too fanciful, and the
description of him as one who was 'always a seeker after something in the
world, that is there in no satisfying measure, or not at all,' seems to
us more applicable to him who saw Mona Lisa sitting among the rocks than
to the gay and debonair peintre des fetes galantes. But Sebastian, the
grave young Dutch philosopher, is charmingly drawn. From the first
glimpse we get of him, skating over the water-meadows with his plume of
squirrel's tail and his fur muff, in all the modest pleasantness of
boyhood, down to his strange death in the desolate house amid the sands
of the Helder, we seem to see him, to know him, almost to hear the low
music of his voice. He is a dreamer, as the common phrase goes, and yet
he is poetical in this sense, that his theorems shape life for him,
directly. Early in youth he is stirred by a fine saying of Spinoza, and
sets himself to realise the ideal of an intellectual disinterestedness,
separating himself more and more from the transient world of sensation,
accident and even affection, till what is finite and relative becomes of
no interest to him, and he feels that as nature is but a thought of his,
so he himself is but a passing thought of God. This conception, of the
power of a mere metaphysical abstraction over the mind of one so
fortunately endowed for the reception of the sensible world, is
exceedingly delightful, and Mr. Pater has never written a more subtle
psychological study, the fact that Sebastian dies in an attempt to save
the life of a little child giving to the whole story a touch of poignant
pathos and sad irony.