The Press. — London, England, 1857-12-26 00:00:00

1258 =happiness is the result ; and Isabel in a fit of pique marries a man whom she does not love, and whom she informs of the fact in anything but a con ciliatory manner. Driven from home by her cold ness, he becomes a gambler, and, though subs.. quently reconciled, is deprived by death of any op portunity of repairing his wrongs or of receiving the atonement she at last becomes willing to offer. Her life, in short, is an utter failure, and her cardinal mis takes of morbid pride and overwrought fastidiousness drag down to misery all with whom she is connected. We are afraid we must pronounce this plct, however interesting in detail, to be an eminently unsatisfac tory affair, and we cannot tell what moral it enforces, unless it be that of the utter futility of all personal and intellectual gifts to one who has placed herself in a false position. Men are often accused of mis representing and doing injustice to the opposite sex : certainly they never represent them in so unfavour able a light as they represent themselves. All the novels which describe painful selt-sacriticeß for un worthy objects, insensate pride and obstinacy, un worthy pique and unbridled passion, united with an almost judicial blindness as to matters of mutual feeling, in persons engaged in constant mutual inter course, are written by women. " Women painted by themselves," that is, by the English female novelists of the present day, would furnish a libel more severe than any which has been levelled against the sex since the days of Euripides. Of course there are exceptions : we do not refer to Mrs. Gore or Mrs. Gaskell, who describe their sisters with truthfulness as well as power; but the most prolific of the pens which supply the circulating libraries seem engaged in a constant attempt to make us believe feminine nature to be the clean contrary of all we have ever heard or experienced it to be. We join issue with the authoress by saying that we do not believe that any one in the place of Isabel Wold would have acted as she is described to have done ; and we con fidently appeal to the verdict of our sensible female readers to support our opinion. It is easier to pro test against such delineations of human nature than to account for the partiality which some writers show for them. Are they the crude imaginings of youth• fal and enthusiastic brains, unused to life and its responsibilities, and preeumptuouely anxious to take upon their shoulders all sorts of burden!' besides those which Providence is certain to place there in the course of their journey ? The fact that most of these writers are unmarried would seem to support, the great talent and observation displayed to forbid, such a supposition. Are they a wholesome reaction against the sleepy prosperity of the old-fashioned style of fiction, where the white favours and brides• maids loom in the distance through a prospective of notinsuperable misfortunes, as surely as at the Lyceum the Bowers of Blooming Beatitude gleam hopefully through the machinations of the cleverele. and most malignant demon ? If such be the case we may feel sympathy, while we are obliged to withhold admira tion. We suspect, however, that the true cause is of a different kind. The delineation of anomalous and unaccountable conduct which we have been ascribing to a certain class of female novelists is, perhaps, a kind of safety-valve to them, just as the portraiture of graver offences sometimes is to the masculine temperament. As a man of imagination pursues his impulses to their consequences, and works out the tendency of cupidity, concupiscence, or anger into forgery, adultery, or murder —so, pro bably, may the female mind luxuriate in theprobabi lities of mispla:ed affection or disappointed hopes— may moralise on the ultimate result of some fault in taste or temper, or exhibit in the concrete form the miserable, though not criminal, consequences flow ing from some insignificant an,l apparently unim portant step. As man works out the problems sug gested by a more corrupt experience and a more worldly knowledge, so woman, perhaps, follews to their result the temptations of the heart, and circum scribes her "wreck of matter and crash of worlds " by the round of daily life and domestic trial. As a man may in imagination become an Angelo or an lago—may make himself a beast or a fiend—so a woman may, under like conditions, give her folly its full swing, and develop a being like those with whom eontemporftry stories have made us familiar. Such deviations from the beaten tract, whatever scope they may give to originality of treatment, are in reality nowise preferable to that which they pretend to supplant. They do not—which should he the aim of the novelist and the poet—individualise com mon materials by the force of art and genius, but they exalt abnormal motives and exceptional situa tions into the guides of conduct, and, throwing principle overboard, commit the destinies of a whole life to the caprice of temper or accident. Even the worldly morality of the eighteenth-century novelists would be preferable to such wild teaching as this, which afflicts the sensibility without informing the judgment, and irritates the sense of probability without much enlivening the imagination. Any friend who should persuade Mr. Charles Reade to leave off his practice of writing prefaces, and letters to the journals, would do him an essential THE PRESS, DECEMBER 26, 1857. service. He has been ill-advised enough to prefix to "Whits Lies" some remarks, in which the following sentence occurs : As if the smallest master could not Anglicize French or any other language : vide " Clouds and Sunshine," which is French Anglicized. This is but a lame acknowledgment of the fact discovered by a correspondent of the Atheneum, that " Clouds and Sunshine" is something more than based on the "Claudia" of Madame Dudevant, and, by placing his Fresent work, as he does, on the same level, gives us ground for conjecturally assigning to it some similarly equivocal parentage. In this case the title becomes rather an awkward one. Apart, however, from such questions—with which we should not have the slightest desire to meddle if Mr. Reade did not force them upon us—we have pleasure in saying that " White Lies " is an exceedingly interest ing and spirited novel ; one of the best, if not the best, of the present season. We are aware that in praising it we run counter to the opinion of that highly respectable class of persona who draw their mental aliment from the London Journal, and who are said to have unmistakeably signified their disapproval of the novel in question as it was hebdomadally pre sented to them. This discordance of opinion we fear we cannot help, as we have the weakness of thinking that a story may be interesting, both in cha racter anti incident, though it should contain neither forgery, murder, nor suicide, and though none of the personages should pass through a single trap-door in the whole course of the narrative. But if Mr. Reade neglected these indispensable aids to domestic popularity ; if, in addition, he chose to be so per versely aristocratic as to describe the ruined noblesse of France not only with sympathy, hut with some degree of enthusiasm ; and if, finally, he was so vexatious as to tease his simple audience with French phrases translated literally into English,—what could he expect but the result which has ensued? Ws think, however, that he will find no reason to regret having appealed from the verdict of the kitchen to that of the drawing-room. Though not so absorbing in its interest as "It is Never Too Late to Mend," his present work shows all the brilliancy and vivacity of style which distinguished that novel ; the "situations" are dramatic and telling, and there is not a single incident described in the book which does not advance the action of the plot. This latter quality is a valuable, and among English novelists a very rare one. Mr. Reade's stage experiences have probably much to do with his complete perception of its importance. Mr. Reade shines m.,st, we are in clined to think, in his delineation of female charac ter, although the moral which the story is intended to point necessarily obliges the emphasis to be laid on what may be called its womanish, rather than on its purely feminine aspect. The female personages are Madame de Beaurepaire, a Royalist widow in the latter part of the French Revolution, her two daughters Josephine and Laure, and Jacintlia, their servant. To describe the plot, by which the re spective lovers of the three latter are gained, lost, toszed, married, killed, resuscitated, and finally settled, would exceed our space and spoil the reader's pleasure in pursuing it through its various and ingenious surprises. It must suffice to say, that toe crosses and complications of tl e story arise from the practice in which Laure and Jacinths indulge of resorting to " White Lies " in any difficulty which oc curs ; and the manner in which, from the little decep tions of their mother which love and poverty suggest to them, they proceed at last to falsehoods which nearly ruin the happiness of the whole party, is managed with great skill and a nice attention to the progress and development of character. The few reelections which interrupt the narrative are short, apt, and full of practical wisdoin. Our readers, if they wish for a thoroughly entertaining and clever book, cannot do better than send for " White Lies." 3. " Court Secrets " is by far the best novel Mrs. Thomson has written, and it has surprised us by its unusually good writing, its piquancy, and the in teresting story which it embodies. Mrs. Thomson has still something to learn in the construction of her plot. The point is one about which ordinary readers will perhaps care little, but it must be re• marked that the " secrets " which begin and end the narrative are not sufficiently interwoven with the main action, but rather lie ontsiae it as a frame work, without materially affecting its development. They relate to one of the minor German principali ties, the heir to which is stolen and otherwise foully dealt with in a way for which Mrs. Thomson is not without warrant in fact. The chief portion of the story, however, consists of the ups and downs of a very pretty love affair—the heroine is as charm ing a one as we have met with in print lb:• many a day—enlivened with numerous sketches of character possessing great fidelity to nature and described with abundance of point. In the latter respect and in general style Mrs. Thomson reminds us very forcibly of Mrs. Gore: in her conception of character and in the scenery of her localities she recalls from time to time the Baroness Tautphoeus. We do not imagine that she has been indebted to either model, for women are much less prone to literary imitation than men. Perhaps their " individuality " is stronger. Be that as it may, Mrs. Thoms on h as produced an interesting and sometimes brilliant novel, and we are much mistaken if the majority of our readers do not like it as well as any on our list. 4. If the reader of this article, when in a novel reading humour, should be unable to obtain either of the three preceding works, he may find a tolerable substitute (sed Longo intervallo; in "The Gables." The story is not badly constructed, and the life described and the characters introduced are for the most part faithful to nature. The heroine is clever and amiable without being insipid, and is something like a gentler—and infinitely pleasanter—sister of the young lady who falls a victim to " caste." Her unrequited attachment for the worthy curate, which occupies the commencement of the book, is well described, and, so far as we are able to judge, not overdrawn either in conception or execution. The " criminal business " of the plot is less praiseworthy, for here it is evident that the authoress has not drawn on her experience or knowledge of life, but on the conventionalities of traditionary fiction. We must also protest most strongly against the vraisem blance of the character of Mr. Langton, who is described as a popular and really able magazine writer, but who displays in his home circle and in the conduct of affairs generally the dreamy careless ness and indifference to external matters of a Newton or an Archimedes. Does the authoress know any " popular magazine -writers "? We do ; and, so far from being addicted to " wool-gathering," or deaf to the dinner-bell, we have always found theni espe cially wide awake, and anything but indifferent to their meals. If the writer of " The Gables " had been of the opposite sex we should have recom mended a course of Fleet street dinners, before introducing popular authors into another story. 5. "Early Struggles" is a tedious and mawkish novel, pervaded by an insipid goodness and weakness in its characters, and told in a way to drive an im patient reader distracted. Like the slow tales of the last century, the characters who are introduced full grown "begin as follows," and have a chapter to themselves for telling their story. Every incident is spun out in the most circumstantial and wearisome style, and thus page after page may be read, as they say, "with the fingers." The heroine (whose " early struggles," by the way, end in the first two or three chapters, so that the title is a misnomer) is an orphan, and is adopted by a recluse young studnnt in the country, with whom, when old enough, site falls in love after the Heloise fashion, but modestly. Her tutor, after being jilted by an aristocratic flirt, turns for consolation to his domestic angel ; but the two stupid people (both of whom are "popular maga zine -writers," and ther?fore blind and deaf) do not find each other out—a thing which, independent of their literary character, a lady of great experience a-sures us is simply impossible. The young person is finally carried off by a returned Indian uncle, and, still in love with her tutor, is married against her will to another man whom she detests. The marriage service is read over the uncle's deathbed, and she is described as supposing it to be the Prayers for the Sick ! " When the fatal ring was being forced on " her finger, her tongue clove to the roof of her " mouth, her nerveless hand remained motionless," &e. The husband gets killed, and the lovers are ultimately united, which is better fortune than such very silly people deserved. Both this book and " The Gables" are atrociously printed—a fault ex ceedingly detrimental to the success of a work, and one for which Mr. Newby's publications are almost al ways remarkable. di 6. There is so much gracefulness of conception and elegance of style about " Tile Lily of Glynne " that we feel the authoress to have done injustice both to herself and us by the sketchy manner in which the characters are described, and the disproportionate space which is assigned to a number of disagreeable or insignificant people. The personages of her tole fail to excite interest because they are incomplete. A dash of local colour is given to them at first, and this feature is insisted on wherever they are after wards introduced. Thus they become, not human beings, but mere embodiments of particelar qualities. There is also a degree of extravagance in certain parts of the plot —as, for instance, where the heroine is taken home by a lady to be her governess and never thinks of asking har employer's name, or where she is married against her will without making any protest. Owing to these faults, the story, which naturally has many elements of interest, produces on us the effects of an opium dream, and seems to have almost as l►ttle to do with reality as the action of a Christmas pantomime. The autobiographical method of narration, too, has something to answer for in en hancing these defects. In spite of them, however, we shall always look with interest for succeeding navels by the same authoress, for she has much originality, has evidently looked on life with her own eyes, understands the classes which she describe', and writes like a lady, and not like a lady's maid.