The Press. — London, England, 1854-01-21 00:00:00

JANUARY 21, 1854. Yittraturt. The Slave Son. By Mrs. William Noy Wilkins. London: Chapman and Hall. W ITH the antecedents of the authoress of this work we are unacquainted ; but as, in conse quence of its subject, and its being introduced to public notice under the distinguished aus pices of Mrs. Jameson, " The Slave Son" is very likely to find a considerable number of readers, we think the present a fair opportu. nity for making some preliminary remarks on the excitement occasioned by the fiction of Mrs. Stowe. Unquestionably the fever about " Uncle Tom was one of the most remarkable inci dents in the history of the literature of modern fiction. The minds of novel-readers are now cooled down, and we are at liberty to indicate some of the main sources of its unprecedented popularity. In doing so we may commence by asking our readers whether they have ever asked themselves the question, " Were the horrors of 'Uncle Tom' a great source of its interest?" It is certain that readers of fiction, especially the generality, delight in strong. stimulants. Some of the most popular fictions owe their success to the large space occupied in their contents by the mysterious and hor rible. In the treatment of such exciting topics there must, of course, be a peculiar felicity. The eloquence of Mrs. Radcliffe, and her sin gular powers of describing scenery, were potent aids to her mysterious incidents; the subtle analysis of Godwin, and his high intel lectuality, helped him in the artistic present ment of the case of Caleb Williams ; and the knowledge of Parisian life in detail enabled Eugene Sue to give an air of reality to the horrible (and in some respects the abominable) pages of " The Mysteries of Paris." In " Uncle Tom's Cabin " the horrible was served up with freshness of manner, change of costume, novelty of local colour, and variety of incident. There was in its pages a mixture of appalling facts and amiable characters, of dreadful incidents and descriptic rhetoric, of the kind most calculated to charm the crowd. There were extrinsic causes, also, which aided in its British popularity. There is a vast " humanitarian " interest in England to whom the names of Clarkson and Wilberforce are endeared. The cause of " negro emanci pation" has had its vicissitudes, its apostles, and its triumphs. There may have been, per haps, something of an honest English feeling at the bottom of this enthusiasm about " Uncle Tom's Cabin." The Pottses and Mawkers of Radicalism, who wished to Americanise England, were silenced by a work which pro fessed to describe a state of things under the Model Republic not at all consistent with those "rights of persons" enjoyed under the consti tutional Monarchy of England. The exotic " Yankeeism " of Manchester was withered by , the , storm of British feeling called into action by a work every chapter of which was rendered more pungent by the conviction that "slaves cannot live in England." The enthusiasm, 'whether right or wrong, eli cited by " Uncle Tom 7 contributed to the proud national conviction "that England was still " the freest country under heaven" ; and the admirers of Mrs. Stowe were not likely to co incide with such sentiments as were utterred last year by a powerful organ—" Mr. Milner Gibson, and those who think with him, take their opinio ns f rom A mer i ca , which they „ think, with some degree of truth perhaps, the "future of England."—Times, April 16, 1863. _ On the particular ethics applicable to the case of "Aboliti on " we have no intention to enter. Such a question can be adequately discussed only in another department of the PREaa. But in regarding the prodigious S uccess of "Un c l e T om " we must look upon the acceptance of the work as being in many respects characteristic of the public mind. The o ular feeling went the whole length with the authoress, to such an extent as to cause American jealousy. But the book itself, with its freshness of matter, and fiery indignation bordering on the fanatical, had a variety of potent rehgious elements to make the followers of the conventicle and the fre quenters of the circulating library unanimous THE PRESS. in their admiration. Stimulants for the lan guid, preaching for the serious, pathos for the sentimental, and fun for the lovers of drollery, were all to be found in the pages of " Uncle Tom." Add to all, that it was really " racy of the soil"—American in its extravagances and its excellences—that it was the writer's own style and method of composition, and we have a fair analysis of the ingredients of its won derful success. Of all the works which appeal to public favour upon (in canvasser's language) the " Uncle Tom interest," this volume of " The Slave Son" is nearly the best that we have seen. It has been our hard lot to have read nearly a dozen of the various " pro-and-anti- Tom" books that have appeared. With a couple of exceptions they were mediocre, some of them morbidly bitter in their recrimi-_ nations, others mawkishly glozing in their sympathy. " The Slave Son " has the ad vantage of not having been exclusively produced by the example of Mrs. Stowe's work. It was written six years ago, in the farm of a series of sketches, laid by at the time, and since, under Mrs. Jameson's advice, recast into one tale. In nothing except the similarity of the subject does the work resemble " Uncle Tom." The scene is laid in Trinidad (circa 1832-34), and the antecedents of " the peculiar institution " of what the present American President has called ." involuntary servitude " are connected with the local incidents of the society of Trini dad. The style of the work is vivid, its rhe toric highly finished, and whoever begins the volume will be sure to read it to the end. It is very rarely, indeed, that an unpractised pen can at the first attempt succeed so well in interesting a reader. Without letting our friends into the secrets of the plot, we will briefly indicate its main sources of interest, and, presenting to them some extracts, we refer them to the volume itself. Sketching the society of Trinidad, the au thoress introduces us to Belfond, the illegiti mate son of St. Hilaire Cardon, one of the principal proprietors in the island, Belfond is in love with Laurine, a beautiful mulatto girl; and, escaping with a bag of gold belong ing to his father and owner, the slave son flies to the mountains, and joins a desperate party of runaways, who have formed them selves into a banditti. There is no part of the work which we have read with so much plea sure as the account of Belfond's wanderings amongst the romantic scenery of Trinidad. Chased by a sailor, with bloodhounds, there is "an escape scene" of considerable interest ; but his visit to the hut of the Obiah sorcerer and its accompanying incidents are the best things in the volume. The negro sorcerer is thus introduced : The mountains which rose at the back of the village were clothed, like all the Trinidad heights, with thick forests old as the flood. There was one, however, not so high as the rest, on which the woods were somewhat thinner; its lower part was mainly covered with a coin partitively scanty brushwood, but half way up this gave place to a dense thicket of nux-vomica, palma-christi, the branched calaloo, poisonous shrubs of the cockroach apple, and many other noxious bushes, all crowded so closely together as to be almost impenetrable. Nature, so beautiful and enchanting elsewhere on the mountains, here assumed a most repulsive aspect : dark, dismal blossoms, huge, misshapen fruits, and glossy leaves almost black with venomous sap, were mingled with thorns, long, pointed, and protruding, like spears of ugly gnomes ; while a rank smell of unwholesome vegetation rendered the atmosphere around unpleasant and difficult, to breathe. The chance traveller, hewing his way in these unfre quented parts, would turn aside to seek more prac ticable subjects for his hatchet, and the wild animals, the free tenants of the forest, would avoid it, as by an instinct given them by nature; yet, through the tangled bushes that formed these melancholy shades, ever and anon there peeped the shrivelled face of an old negro, listening. spying, watching, as if for the approach of some one. Sometimes, in his eagerness, he would half expose himself to view, and then might be seen strange appendages — snakes hanging and coiling about him, caressing him. ..- He is then described in his retreat ; and the passage has that fidelity to local impressions which gives so great a charm to works of fiction that paint actuality : The old negro adopted various contrivances for making himself feared ; one of these was the choice of strange pets. The companions of his life were three snakes, the largest of their kinds, and an American dog entirely desti tute of hair. Of the reptiles one was an aboma, or boa constrictor, fourteen feet long, which he called by the name of Mottle. Another was a horsewhip snake, green, and tapering finely off to the tail, not in reality a dangero us kind, but feared by the negroes from a superstitious belief = - 63 that it whips to death any stray negro it can seize ; this the sorcerer named Cow•skin. The third was a coral snake, the most venomous reptile of the colonies, figured through- out its length with alternate rings of red and deepest black ; this he called Vixen. These creatures wound themselves about the wizard's neck and arms, caressing him and obeying him, and guarding his gloomy domicile with their various noises of alarm and anger. How he had tamed them no one knew; the negroes over whose minds he had acquired an absolute dominion considered his control over them as part and parcel of his divining power. The native Spaniards, however, or Spanish Indians I should rather say, would hint at the wonderful properties of a pretty little climbing plant, the Mikania Gude°, the juice of which, taken internally as tea, and inoculated into various parts of the body, acts as an effectual antidote to the bites of the most venomous serpents. Its virtues, they will tell you, were discovered by a Spaniard, who accidentally witnessed the lighting of two serpents. The combat was deadly, and ended with the apparent death of one of them ; but no sooner had the victor gone his way than the wounded one crawled slowly and with difficulty to the bushes near, and, choosing from among them the leaves of a climber, he recovered thereupon marvellously, and in a little time also went his way. he Spaniard with curiosity remarked and examined the plant, to which botanists have since given the name above mentioned. With the juice and leaves of this the sorcerer was supposed to have inoculated himself, or he may p►obably have extracted the reptiles' fangs by wrapping his hand in thick leather, presenting it to the serpent's mouth, and then dextrously withdrawing it, when the fangs, driven deep into the leather, would come away with it. Ile that as it may, to the horror and awe of all who visited the sorcerer, there were the snakes, perfectly obedient to his word, and to him at least perfectly harmless. They knew . him well, and came at his call, each according to its name—Mottle, Cowskiu, and Vixen. As may be supposed, he was attached to them, perhaps because he knew they were the only creatures on earth who cared for The incantation scene in which the Obiah priest displays his powers is very striking ; but we must proceed to extract a portion of the chapter called " Chasing Game,' in which Higgins, with the bloodhounds, is on the trail of Belfond : Soon they came, clamouring furiously, while Higgins from afar was shouting with all his might to encourage them. lielfond, looking round from the high bough to which he had climbed, espied • considerable patch of the Mauritia aruleata growing thickly clustered, and mingled with smaller thorny bushes, which served to fill up the gaps. This plant is near akin, if I remember well, to the yucca, or Adam's needle, but much taller, and the spines at the end of the leaves are much stronger and longer; it coven miles in the centre of the island, where there is little rising ground, but is rarely seen on mountains ; here, however, by good fortune, it grew luxuriantly. Just in the centre of this thicket were rotten stumps of a group of palms, which had sprung originally, as they sometimes do, from an undivided bunch of nuts. These palms, growing all so close together, had been blasted by the lightning, and had gradually rotted to the ground. Upon this space Belfond fixed his eye ; but the leap was hazardous, not, only from the height at which he stood, but also from the difficulty of taking a spring, both on account of his narrow footing and of the crooked position he was obliged to maintain under so many overhanging boughs; but it was his only safety now. Meantime Higgins was approaching, and the dogs, still barking with fury, made violent efforts to get at him. Moments grew precious ; Belfond tried another bough, which, though more slender, yet promised better, from standing more apart. He had no sooner rested his weight upon it than it broke beneath him, and he slipped within five yards of the dogs : dextrously, however, lie grasped • bough, climbed up like a monkey to his former perch, and recommenced searching for a cowvenient place to leap from. Unfortunately, in his rapid march, Belfond had made a sort of path for Higgins, who, having once dis covered it, followed it up rapidly. He was now within a few yards of the tree, unable as yet to see the runaway by reason of the thickness of the foliage, but by the motion of a particular point he could guess very well where his game was hiding. Presently, as lie drew near, he dis covered, thirty feet up a tree, the figure of a man making his way to the end of a bough. As he approached the end, the leaves became less and less dense, and the figw't stood out: Higgins recognised him, and the woods re-echoed with his shouts of triumph. " Hem ! " thought Belfond, " curse not the cayman's mother till you have crossed the river ; and coolly and collectedly, amidst the looping lianas which threatened to entangle him in mid air, he took his aim, and leaped fairly into the middle of the thicket. Higgins, as he saw the feat, for a moment remained thunderstruck, but he took courage again. . " On, Fangs! at him, Bull ! catch him, my boys ! " and the dogs began to leap and bark furiously, but in vain ; the bushes were eight feet high, and four to ten thick all round : at every point, in every direction, long wicked spears crossed and recrossed one another, or the spaces were filled up with smaller bushes equally stinging. The dogs leaped up again and again, and each time they recoiled with shriller cries of pain ; then they snivelled at the ground, and at length one of them insituated his body in beneath, dragging himself along on his stomach. At last he disappeared, and, to the oaths and shouts of Higgins, the other followed. Both were now out of sight. Belfond, from within, was not unaware of his danger: his fine quick ear had detected the new movement, and with his eye fixed upon the place he perched himself upon the rotten trunk, which sank beneath his weight, all alive with woottants : this, however, he did not mind. He held his knife ready, and just as the dog's head appeared from under the lowest leaves he struck it on the back,— r W`, Aift