The Sun.
London, England, 1862-10-31 00:00:00

LITE.RAT U.RE.

Lady Audley's Secret. By M. E. Braddon. 3
vols. Tinsley Brothers, Catherine-street, Strand.
To say that a novel which within a few weeks of
publication has reached a fourth edition must pos-
sess rare power of attraction, is almost superfluous,
and we may add that in this case the success is not
only emphatic but deserved. Faultless the work is
not. The author sometimes let her pen run away
with her. But its merits far outweigh its defects,
and it possesses that essential quality in fiction of
arresting at the first page the reader's attention and
holding it fettered to the last. The care with which
the author narrates her story can scarcely be sur-
passed. Once embarked in its stream the reader is
carried along without effort, and he forgives the
defects he may note on the way for the sake of the
pleasure derived from the journey. The heroine is,
of course, Lady Audley, although she serves rather
as a lurid background, the prominent figure in the
work being Robert Audley, a barrister, and nephew
of her husband's, through whose exertions it is that
her crimes are brought to light. Not that this is
with him a labour of love, but one of duty. A friend
of his, George Talboys, after calling at Audley
Court, mysteriously disappears. Circumstances lead
him to believe that Lady Audley is interested in his
removal ; he diligently accumulates proofs.of her
criminality, and at length overwhelms her witil un-
answerable tokens of her guilt. Thus the story is
made up in no inconsiderable degree of circum-
stantial evidence. Robert Audley, in his search'
after truth, is sometimes baffled, occasionally dis-
couraged, but ultimately successful. Still his natural
indolence might have led him to wash his hands of
the affair, had not he been impelled on his path
by the handsome sister of his lost friend, where-
upon he thus soliloquise":—‘' What the devil am I
doing in this galore ?" he asked. " But lam in it,
and I can't get out of it ; so I'd better submit my-
self to the brown-eyed girl, and do what she tells
me, patiently and faithfully. What a wonderful
solution to life's enigma there is in petticoat govern-
ment ! Man might lie in the sunshine and eat
lotuses, and fancy it ' always afternoon,' if his wife
would let him ! But she won't, bless her impulsive
heart and active mind ! She knows better than
that. Whoever heard of a woman taking life as it
ought to be taken ? Instead of supporting it as an
unavoidable nuisance, only redeemable by its bre-
vity, she goes through it as if it were a pageant or
a procession. She dresses for it, and simpers, and
grins, and gesticulates for it. She pushes her
neighbours, and struggles for a good place in the
dismal march ; she elbows, and writhes, and
tramples, and prances to the one end of making the
most of the misery. She gets up early and sits up
late, and is loud, and restless, and noisy, and unpi-
tying. She drags her husband on to the woolsack,
or pushes him into Parliament. She drives him
full butt at the dear, lazy machinery of Govern-
ment; and knocks and buffets him about the wheels,
and cranks, and screws, and pulleys, until some-
body, for quiet's sake, makes him something that
she wanted him to be made. That's why incom-
petent men sometimes sit in high places, and inter-
pose their poor muddled intellects between the
things to be done and the people that can do them,
making universal confusion in the helpless inno-
cence of well-placed incapacity. The square men in
the round holes are pushed into them by their
wives. The Eastern potentate who declared
that women were at the bottom of all mischief,
should have gone a little further and seen why it is
so. It is because women are never lazy. They
don't know what it is to be quiet. They are Semi-
ramides, and Cleopatras, and Joans of Arc, Queen
Elizabeths, and Catherines the Second, and they riot
in battle and murder, and clamour and desperation.
If they can't agitate the universe and play at ball
with hemispheres, they'll make mountains of war-
fare and vexation out of domestic molehills, and
social storms in domestic tea-cups. Forbid them to
hold forth upon the freedom of nations and the
wrongs of mankind, and they'll quarrel with Mrs.
Jones about the shape of a mantle or the character
of a small maid-servant. To call them the weaker
Isex is to utter a hideous mockery. They are the
teachers, soldiers,
let them be
stronger sex, the noisier, the more persevering, the
most. self-assertive sex. They want freedom of
opinion, variety of occupation, do they ? Let them
will
have it. Let them be lawyers, doctors, preachers,
task concluded,pleigeti,sliaftotrhse—y legislators—anything like—
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fascinating manners or a charming
before us, then, is, so far, perfectly healthy in tone.
The incidents may, some of them, be termed melo-
dramatic, and we must not be too exacting as re-
gards probability, but there is no revelling in horror
for horror's sake, no dwelling on repulsive featuresrr
to
and showexe thet
e ext
wonder,en t ofm writer'sitxheedw thdisgust, in the mind skill in dissection,
of the reader. The tendency of the author is, on
the contrary, to dwell on whatever is bright and
beautiful, and her picturesque power of description
vivifies the narrative, and fills it with form and
colour. The plot we abstain from giving, as we
think few of our readers with
a taste for
fiction
would thank us for diminishing the pleasure they
will take in unravelling its intricacies for themselves