The Press. — London, England, 1855-10-06 00:00:00

956 yittraturt. My First Season By Beatice Reynolds. London : Smith and Elder. THE readers of this tale will, we fancy, be more struck by its cleverness than by any other quality. The story is well developed, the dialogue sparkles with talent, and the pages are crowded with satirical sketchings, and close, clever presentations of life and charac ter, drawn with artistic skill, especially in the delineation of those minute and secret points of woman's inmost character, which we all can recognise but so few define. The story is ingenious and spirited. Beatrice Reynolds, a young orphan, is brought up with the family of her cousin, Lord Ailye, a curious young ascetic, who inflicted a life of routine upon his younger brothers and sisters, and sought, in his retirement from society and the rigorous restraint which he inflicted upon his family, to turn their thoughts by prayer and fasting away from the things of this world. Luckily for our heroine, and for the full development of her life, Lord Ailye's gentle, subdued spirit fails under the severity of the trial, and he dies, leaving his younger brother George to succeed to the title and estates, and his sister Rowena and cousin Beatrice to the care of Lady Barres, a distant relative. Under her ladyship's protection Beatrice is received into fashionable society, passes through the ordeal of her first season, and at the end of it retires disgusted with the hollowness of the life she witnessed and deeply in love with her cousin's tutor, a princely Pole, in exile, but who, restored to his estates, returns to his native land and leaves poor Beatrice, not lamenting—for she is too proud on the one hand to do that, and too contented on the other in having contributed to the happiness of her cousin George, now Lord Ailye, by making a match between him and the Pole's sister, Maya, at once a beauty and a model woman — but tinged with a certain colouring of disap pointment and sarcasm. Lady Barres, to whose protection Beatrice is confided; is one of the best and most finished characters in the book. Well bred, indolent, selfish, and intriguing, she felt Beatrice— passing poor, with only seventy pounds a year of her own —to be rather a responsibility, and sought by every means to get rid of her by marriage ; yet, when rank and fortuns desired to be laid at the feet of the young beauty, Lady Barres sent Beatrice out of town forsix months, and successfully consoled the dissonsolate earl by offering herself in her stead. The character of her ladyship is neatly sketched : Lady Banes was a widow, who concealed, if she felt, any lingering regret for a husband she had lost before the birth of an only child. I did not know, until I became acquainted with this consolation of his mother, that his father had been killed in a steeple-chase ; and, until subsequently un deceived, I fancied that this inauspicious event was the reason Lady Barres had remained a widow two and twenty years, she having been married at the mature age of sixteen. I soon found that she loathed any kind of disturbance to her indolent dreamy life—she suffered neither poverty nor passion to ruffle its calm I need scarcely say Lady Barres would put up with no kind of scene. I never gave her any trouble of this kind; but when Rowena gave way to her feelings, as young ladies in society sometimes will, she always locked her into her room, went out for a drive, and did not return for several hours. Lady Barres was a person of the best ton, rather than thoroughbred—which means that, though a prince, the cream of royalty, had once or twice honoured her hand by touching it with his glove in a cotilion, the King Cophetua would scarcely have discerned a desiderated consort beneath her tatters had she been a " beggar maid." She was rank-ridden, aristocratic to the care—the evidences of her " blood " being hands and feet as white as lilies, of which she was so openly vain that I have seen her sit for an hour in her dressing-room with her shoes and stockings off, and her feet displayed on a cushion of crimson velvet, while she coaxed me with the eloquent gestures of her hands, or rallied, which was her method of scolding, in her soft, ineffably polished tones. She was plain in features, but her bead was beautiful; and her natural languor gave the impression of a being less busy by far than I found she really was. She was not less fitted by nature than by her courtly experience to introduce those ciphers of civili sation, young ladies not yet out, to the splendid circum stances and serious absurdities of the circle she adorned — which, perhaps, all who can should enter, at least in youth. Lady Barres is anxious to marry Beatrice to her son. The description of the lover is clover : On going downstairs to breakfast I found Lady Barres, 10, 1 9 w!aally bMqcbitpd 'her . dressing•roora 4 sitting at p THE PRESS. table which looked ready laid for dinner, so thickly was it covered with dishes and decanters. She addressed me immediately, kissing me on both my cheeks. " I ant happy to tell you," she said, " that Horace is here; not in this room you see, for, poor dear fellow, he. has gone to wash his hands. He left Bovington at sunrise, and has only been four hours on the road. I tell him he must have ridden too hard—but a gentleman should excel in horsemanship, should not he? No person could rind fault with him for coining as fast as possible when he had so mueb to expect." Then, in a whisper as of a southern breeze, " Do you know why he has come, poor dear fellow? Entirely because I described you to him, my child! He declared it must be a flattering description, and has come to judge for himself !" How ridiculous !" I exclaimed; for I thought her infi nitely so, since she had rallied me on being a beauty in the bud—a bijou beauty—" Afignonne, love, but still a belle; and preferred by highly-refined tastes, I assure you, very frequently!" Had I not been curious to behold this only son of hie mother, I should have retreated upon discovering her mood ; but, almost while yet she spoke, Lord Barres ap peared, filling the height and breadth of the doorway. This being was of immense proportions, so tall as nut to seem stout, and so stout as not to look tall. He had a certain sort of symmetry too, the symmetry one may ob serve in a very fat baby that has not a bone to show. His hands, red as roses, had apparently no muscle, there being big dimples in the place where knuckles should be deve loped, and his wrists were marked by creases in the super abundant flesh. His complexion, originally blond, had yielded to a stress of sunshine, and was profusely freckled; his hay-coloured hair was weather-bleached at the extremi ties, and a little straggling stubble composed his whiskers. A bland, foolish expression dwelt in his gooseberry-coloured eyes, which would have been actually swinish but for their human insolence, lurking under flaxen lashes. To describe the minntite of his breakfast would suffi ciently indicate his idiosyncrasy; but I did not dare to watch him, because the whole time he ate he was staring at me as though he should very much prefer to eat me rather than what was upon the table. I noticed, however, that he partook of no bread, and that after devouring seve ral kinds of meats he drank claret and complained of it, then finished with cheese and a liquor be called stingo, which his mamma must have had brewed especially for him, as it never appeared upon the table before or after his visit. Lord Barres is so well drawn that we are sorry to find him killed off by delirium tremens a few pages further on. " His mother," we are told, " erected a monument to his " memory, and for it Chantry carved a bust " from the features of Lady Barres." This tendency to sketch and kill off her best cha racters is a failing of the authoress. Lord Mayfair, a dissolute young marquis, lives but for a few pages, and is then consigned to the Morgue.— The Marquis of Mayfair was a very young man, looking old but not mature—the fatal prematurity not of genius or of sorrow, but of vice, had exaggerated every line of his strait, hard forehead into that hieroglyph of retributive jus tice—reckless despair. There was no beam of youthful ingenuousness in his eye, but soft insatiable vanity lurked under lids whose lashes were blighted by the fever of shameless sin Lord Mayfair seemed looking at no lady in particular— indeed, l should have thought him too far spent to examine anything ; but it was evident that every lady looked at him in particular, nor with disfavour in her glances either. Struck with the youth and ingenuousness of Beatrice, his lordship requests an introduc tion, which Lady Barres is only too proud to permit : Before I knew where I was, Lord Mayfair was presented to me formally, and I was too timid at the moment to out rage etiquette by refusing his lordship when he imme diately requested me to dance. However, I felt that he only so distinguished me--perhaps the only unknown indi vidual present—because I was fresh, inexperienced, and new to the world of beauty. But I cannot express my horror when face to face with him. It is no chimerical hypothesis which maintains there is an actual and material impression conveyed by moral darkness. Darker than doom, far darker than the night of death, is the reaction of depravity upon its votaries or its victims, and methinks a fallen angel has fallen not so far as a fallen man. I had been glanced upon with ad miration by several that evening, and my heart had warmed beneath their glances—this man gazed upon me with homage, and a bitter loathing seemed to chill my blood. A masterlyhand is shown in the sketch of a ball-room scene. Maya, George Ailye's intended bride, appears for the first time in fashionable society. Lady Barres, aware who she is, attempts to sneer her down, and answers an inquiry from her friend, the duchess, by representing the family as adven turers : Whispers circling the room caught my ear on every side. " Who is she ?"—" who is she ?"—hissed young men and fair woman, dowagers and dandies ; and the piquancy of the question consisted in nobsdy being able to answer it. In these days men take with their eyes the measure of ladies' ankles, bet upon their fort ones, and discuss whether complexions be genuine when the fair are false. Now, ladies do not invariably ask whether men's fathers have been in trade. There are other social changes—have people ceased to lisp " who is she?" Maya must have heard the snake-like sihilation, but it Pained her not; it hod no power urn her. tier ingeuuotus SATIj4DAX, and commanding countenance showed that she was at ease, occupied with her own thoughts, and unconscious of giving or taking offence. Her dancing was exquisite for the grace and harmony of her movements, which nymph-like sprung from the elastic step of her small and slender feet —a charm far rarer than the most beautiful of hands. " What name did they say ?" asked the duchess, fol lowing Maya with her glass. " Henry ! But it cannot be Henry—there is an excellent Irish stock of that name." " Pray do not foist them upon the protection of poor vice-royalty," replied Lady Barres, with a soft laugh. " The name is not Henry, nor any other that any one has ever heard of; it is an alias. The people who assume it, however, unfortunately for their credentials; chose one most likely to betray their sore need of its shelter. Poor persons, however, one ought, perhaps, never to blame; for poverty is not a crime, any more than namelessness." " How then," asked the duchess, in a hard haughty tone, " did they contrive to get here—to be asked, as I suppose they were ?" " The girl is pretty," returned Lady Barres; " a charm ing savage in a civilised crowd : she is too simple to know her place. I doubt not her beauty is the whole capital of her needy relations ; and they have speculated in it too rashly for success. When my cousin's ear is gained, he will indiscriminately grant any favour; and to gain the ear of a youth who has scarcely tasted life, we all know is easy. It is only for an elder person, one who affects wisdom because he has passed years in obscurity—to whisper of beauty yet unseen, and graft imaginary charms on a slight reality." " You doubt her beauty then !—For my part, I had scarcely seen her; but those massive marble outlines I dislike, and the unnaturally large eyes which stare and roll so." " Marble !" exclaimed Lady Barres as the duchess made this remark. " Marble ! oh my dear creature, do not ca lumniate the charm of statuary—those classic forms which only the rarest symmetry can emulate. That complexion yonder is frightful ; it is the sallow white, which passes for delicate pale only by lamplight. One does not meet with it amongst the English women, so it imposes here ; but abroad is common among the bourgeoisie, and it is the type of the ballet." It required a woman's pen to write this conversation ; it has all the delicate, keen, cutting satire of the sex, and " the type of the ballet " is a concluding sneer of feminine pungency. The book is full of such clever sketches—poets, preachers, nobles, and ladies, with a footman and lady's-maid for the low comedy, are all hit off with nice sarcasm and skilful portraiture. The narrative is always in movement, the style terse and pointed, and the whole book remarkable for its keen satire and general cleverness. A Treatise on the Administration of Trust Funds, under the Trustee Relief Act. By John Dar ling, Esq., Barrister-at-Law. London : Stevens. WE have seldom seen a legal treatise upon any particular act in which the intent, the principles, the provisions, and the working of the statute are more clearly and expressly laid down than in this commentary by Mr. Dar ling. Though the Trustee Relief Act is o f limited application, extending only to sums of money and Government Stocks, yet as far as it goes it proceeds on the reasonable and equitable ground that trustees should be at liberty to relieve themselves of the distribu tion of such funds when they think proper, by handing them over to the Court of Chancery.- The intent of the act no doubt was, that trustees should be able to take this step when difficulties in the execution of their trusts. presented themselves ; but as the act is per missive in all cases without exception, trustees are at perfect liberty to avail them. selves of it whenever they think proper, pro vided they exercise their discretionary power in a bona-fide manner. Cases are given hers in which the costs of trustees in paying their. funds into court have been refused, on 019. ground that they acted capriciously, and in a way detrimental to the parties interested in the fund. Such cases are rare, and we think it questionable whether in the case of In re Fagg's Trust the costs should have been re fused, as it does not appear that there were any circumstances of main fides bn the part of the trustees, and it was hard that they should in the administration of a trust fund be made to suffer for an error of judgment upon what it is admitted was " a reasonable ground of doubt." All matters relating. to the working of the act, with the various decisions which have been given on litigated points, are so well laid down here, that the treatise may be accepted as a most complete guide to Ow practical application of 1,4 stai,ut,