The Sun.
London, England, 1851-07-24 00:00:00

LITERAT LIRE

THE CUP AND THE LIP. A IV ovel. By
Laura Jewry. 3 Vols. T. C. Newby.
Remembering, as we do, the charming tales already
contributed by Miss Laura Jewry to our imaginative
literature, it is impossible not to welcome her present
volumes with a very genuine satisfaction. Those
who happen to be already familiar with her produc-
tions need from us, in their regard, no syllable of
recommendation. It is to others, therefore, that we
should feel disposed to commend that beautiful story
of " The Ransom," in which our authoress first re-
vealed her powers as a romancist, adventuring even
into those regions which had already been peopled by
the fictitious creations of Sir Walter Scott, and pene-
trating, not over-rashly as it proved, into the wilder-
nesses and sanctuaries of Palestine. Subsequently
Miss Jewry contented herself with the unravelling of a
plot, the principal figures in which were brought
forward the more prominently and appreciably from
the circumstance of their being surrounded by the
green and sunny groundwork of an English land-
scape. Vindicating her capabilities as a domestic
novelist in " Kirkeholme Priory," our authoress re-
verted in her next effusion to her favourite fields of
romance, blending together, in " The Forest and the
Fortress," the vitality derived from events which
had actually transpired in recent times, and the fasci-
nation inseparable from a career of astonishing and
almost fabulous vicissitudes. In the rugged but
chivalric nature of Kara George, the Gospo.dar of
Servia, her genius discovered a theme worthy
of delineation and congenial to her sensibilities,
it was, therefore, with peculiar evidences of vigour
in regard to the conception, and of delicacy in regard
to the portraiture of character in that fiction, that
Miss Jewry recounted in words of mingled pathos
and passion the chequered fortunes of her hero, and

t he fluctuating time; in which he lived and—perished.
HEr fancy appeared to derive a new enthusiasm from
the unfrequented scenes selected by her for descrip-
tion, and you could perceive in the pauses, and some-
times in the apparently capricious movements of her
narrative, the delight with which she now lingered
among the plum orchards of the Servian village, or
plunged the reader again into the anguish
of a campaign, or into the torments of
a bombardment. 'Round several of the more fanci-
ful among her dramatis personw, 'round that dainty
little bijou of a Turkish Blaiden Shirine, for example,
she seemed to fling all the stores of her invention—
at all times abundant—but never more conspicuously
displayed than in these instances of fitful predilection.
Hence, it was possibly from this sense of unfettered
fancy and untrammelled imagination that she suc-
ceeded in investing her latest romance with a charm
kindred in force as well as in description with the
interest originally thrown by her delightful
sty le and exhilarating earnestness over her
first exquisite story of " The Ransom."
Another fiction, designated according to the
present title-page " The Vassal," owes to her
mind its authorship, but never having, to our recol-
lection, perused it, we cannot, of course, pronounce
it either to be worthy or unworthy of its writer's re-
. .

putation. Our decision in this regard has fortunately
to be expressed upon a work more within the range
of our comprehension—namely, upon the three vo-
lumes whose title, as above intimated, has been sug-
gested by a venerable proverb. " Many a slip 'twixt
the cup and lip," is a phrase which experience has
yielded not alone to our mother tongue, but with
equal certainty of appreciation to all the various
languages of Christendom. Its import we all feel
at once to be sorrowful. Prefixed to a narra-
tive like the present, consequently, it implies that
the tale that is told is one marred by a bitter
and melancholy termination. Intelligent readers
might sententiously remind us, in the words of
Hamlet, "It needs no ghost to tell us that ;" but,
obvious though the fact is, it nevertheless requires
some mention from the reviewer, inasmuch as it in-
dicates on his part the breaking of no confidence when
alluding to the mournful conclusion. If every title-
page is the housefront of a work, that of the novel
here submitted to our criticism bears about it (in its
very name) an escutcheon. In this we cannot but
think that there is a lack, somewhat of artistic fore-
thought. Bearing the sombre title of the volumes in
his remembrance, the reader sits down to their exa-
, ruination with an unsatisfactory premonition of
disappointment as to the catastrophe. Not that we
would hamper any novelist with a rule compelling
him to select only names of bewildering obscurity,
such as may be seen in "The Scarlet Letter" of Na-
thaniel Hawthorne. Neither that we would debar
him from the privilege of recounting a tale whose
close is one not of rejoicing but of lamentation. All
that we can possibly object to in the graceful heading
of the volumes just published from the manuscripts of
our authoress is the circumstance that it removes in a
great measure that veil of doubt and mystery which
diffuses over " the novel" its indescribable attraction.
Not that we enter any protest whatever against the
employment of the more tragic materials by the
writer of fiction, regarding those materials as the
integral substance of many of the chief masterpieces
in our so-called light literature. Scott, for example,
has penned no more enthralling tale than that " Bride
of Lammermooor " which ends in lunacy and blood-
shed. Dickens has never surpassed in pathos or popu-
larity that " Old Curiosity Shop," in which the death
of Little Nell falls upon the heart of the reader like
the pang of some home calamity. Bulwer Lytton
again, has never, even in his various manifesta-
tions of power, excelled in energy or in eloquence,
that luminous and mystic " Zanoni," in which
the last scene is the rolling of the tumbril to
the guillotine. Our authoress has, doubtless, felt
the reality of this secret vigour in the
sorrowful, and has availed herself of the truth of
which it is suggestive. Her only error appears to us
to be the circumstance of her letting her readers at
the very outset into the secret, by means of the clue
discoverable on the title-page. Instead of wandering
discursively among the wild woods of romance, Miss
Jewry has, for this while at least, as in "Kirkhohne
Priory," sauntered among the trim hedgerows of reality,
—a reality so common place in its kind, that to an ordi-
nary observer it would present no features whatever
worthy of delineation. " The Cup and the Lip" is a
story of everyday life, developed among everyday
people, acted in scenes with which we are all of us
familiar, in the streets of London and in' the gardens
of a country village. We remember somewhere in
a preface to one of his lively little books of pleasantry,
Albert Smith likened society to a very shallow stream
indeed, remarking that he restricted himself in his
writings to floating among the water-lilies on the
surface, and not to diving among the drowned cats
and potsherds at the bottom. Another moment's
reflection is sufficient to remind us in addition to this,
that society, though a stream shallow enough in the
long run (and we say this without any coxcombical
effort at a pun) has in it here and there abysses unfa-
thomable in their depth, inscrutable in their purpose,
and impenetrable in their character. Now, what we
are especially led to admire in Miss Jewry's
fiction of " The Cup and the Lip," is the
tact that she contents herself with no mere
surface writing, with no ignoring of the abomi-
nations hidden from the sight of the merely superficial
spectator, but that, viewing all, the good and the bad,
alike with the same impartiality, she has the courage
in addition to this to point out steadily and strongly
some of those dark abysses to which we have alluded,
abysses most of them of villauous criminality.
Thus it happens that among the imaginary indivi-
duals pourtrayed in the present volumes we discover
the virtuous and the vicious, the generous and the
dastardly, the pure and stainless maiden, the-profli-
gate and degraded adventuress, the villain without a
qualm in the midst of his atrocities, and the gentle-
hearted and noble-minded man to whom honour
is as a talisman and probity as a breastplate.
From all sections of the community—from the most
exemplary and the most detestable—the novelist,
with a just estimate cf her responsibilities as an in-
culcator of morality, has chosen the types of vice and
of virtue as they exist among our population. In this she
has acted according to the custom rendered popular
by all the masters of fiction from the chequered nar-
ratives of Le Sage to the grim and ghastly revelations
of Balzac, from the sentimental love stories of Ri-
chardson to the sour-visaged satires of Thackeray.
The novel before U 3 opens very gracefully in a sum-
mer's morning on the sea shore near the beautiful
little watering place Hastings. The forms first de-
picted are those of Edward Neill), a young naval
lieutenant, and his wife Fanny. Fanny, however, is
not the heroine, that dignity being reserved for her
daughter Dolores. The last-mentioned character is
perhapS the most beautiful Miss Jewry has yet de-
picted, and around it consequently is con-
centrated the main interest of the tale.
It is to the lip of Dolores that the cup is
raised so frequently only to be dashed away before
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Livingstone, to say nothing of her enthusiastic ad-
mirers, generoust)aronet,
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Walter is the hero around whose steps are thrown
an enthralling but painful interest, his desti-
nies btieg the source at once of all the
joys and all the sorrows of Dolores. Further cannot
be said in his regard without prematurely disclosing
I,niecoeot
threadtlliol to 'etoi'l hitol a plot,lleer‘u''' ruffianly its principal attraction. Mark
Wood, and thereby marring in refer-
ence
fellow enough, and a mur-
derer to boot, is very far indeed from being the most
repulsive individual in the novel, his atrocities being i
surpesed,by the wanton profligacy of Mrs. Smith,
by the cold-blooded poisonings of the woman in the