The Sun.
London, England, 1869-05-19 00:00:00

~- ____.z .-►------

(IT
"
Elrimbit
4,) ) •

The Prince and Princess of Wales drove out
yesterday.

LITERATURE.

True Love. By Lady Di Beauclerk. One Vol.
Pp. 270. Hurst and Blackett.
Daughter of a Duke and sister of a Duke, the
Lady Di Beauclerk is already favourably known as
an authoress by her sparkling maiden work descrip-
tive of " A Summer and Winter in Norway." Her
ladyship now appears before the world of readers
in the character of a novelist. " True Love" is the
title of the one-volumed tale in which she sets forth
her imaginings. According to Shakspere, " the
course of true love never did run smooth." The
True Love here described is, wel,presunae, the excep-
tion proving the rule set forth in the familiar diction
of the great Dramatist. For it—this True Love of
Sydrey Vere and Edith AI array, the hero and
heroine of the story—could hardly by any possi-
bility run smoother. The narrative opens,
oddly enough, inside an omnibus in the
streets of Nottingham. A drenching storm of rain
is falling. A poor factory girl, wretchedly ill clad,
is one of the chance passengers—the last corner
being a young man, who plunges into the vehicle in
breathless haste at the moment it is starting. These
two are the most prominent characters introduced
to our notice in the book—the factory girl being
Edith—the young man Sydney. Both of them
have the world before them-- have their fortunes to
make, and with the poorest possible prospect of
making it. Yet, before a very few months have run
out, Sydney has come into a large property, and the
poor factory girl, Edith, turns out to be the only
daughter and heiress of a mining engineer, who has
made a fortune of £30,000 or £40,000 in Mexico.
They are, of course, happily married, when the
story has been brought to its conclusion—not,
however, until a murder has been committed, the
result of which has been that Sydney inherits from
his aunt, Lady \Tore, a considerable estate.
There is a Rev. Mr. St. Clair, a High Church
clergyman, a ritualist, and a fortune-hunter, who
is noticeable among the imaginary personages in-
troduced to the readers of this book, who must be
protested against as a most odious caricature.
Every touch in his delineation is expressive of pre-
judice, spite, and illiberality. Having no sym-
pathy whatever ourselves with the class or sect of
which he is designed to be a characteristic ex-
emplar, we cannot but regard the limning
of such a type of the Leaders of Ritual-
ism as singularly ungenerou3 and extravagant.
Some of the little finnical points in his portraiture
are simply ludicrous—as, where speaking of his per-
sonal cleanliness, it is absurdly remarked by our
authoress that the characteristic spoken of is oue cer-
tainly not applying to the Romish priesthood. A
sweeping comment—a splashing of mud that ought
assuredly not to have been cast from the fair hands
of Lady Di Beauclerk. The other persons intro-
duced into the narrative form, altogether, a very
motley groupe, including among them, as they do,
such people as Mrs. Nupkins, a low eating-house-
keeper ; Jemmy Shaw, an irreclaimable drunkard
and blackguard, one who eventually becomes the
murderer of Lady Vero; that same fribbling,
giggling, Lady Vere, a would-be leader of fashion
among the provincials ; her insignificant sister, a
widow like herself, by name Mrs. Jones ; the latter'l
doll of a daughter Dorothy, intended to be the be-
trothed of her cousin Sydney, but who in the end
becomes the namby-pamby wife of the Ritualistic
Mr. St. Clair ; Mrs. Shaw, Jem's putative aunt,
but in reality his mother—together with several
other characters more or less insignificant. These
are the puppets dangled upon the thread of the
narrative in this play of marionnettes. The only inci-
dent of anything like an exciting nature in the tale
is the murder already referred to. There are private,
theatricals, morning calls, sketching parties, and
other tame little doings related in the course of the
twenty-one chapters into which the book is sub"
divided. Towards the close of the story 0
episode carries Sydney for a while across the
Atlantic, but nothing whatever comes of iG
in his instance in the way of adventure. A fashion-
able contemporary, we observe, has made a courtly
allusion to this tale of " True Love," as told by
Lady Di Beauclerk, as affording evidence that Wit
has not died out among the ladies of England since
the days of Lady Mary Wortley Montague. The
compliment is so outrageously extravagant in it 4
way that it simply recalls to our remembrance the
reply made by the Prince de Ligny, who had be°
trying unsuccessfully to make a piece of water in
his grounds, when come one told him there had
been a man drowned in it—" C'etait un fiatteur !
No—the book adds nothing whatever to Lady PI
Beauclerk's literary reputation. It simply shove
that the writer of a charming book of travels call
dash off curreute cabala a very indifferent imaginal
narrative.