The Sun.
London, England, 1867-03-01 00:00:00

Lady de. By M. E. Braddon. One Vol.
. 358. Ward, Lock, and Tyler.
Another—the tenth—volume has, here, been added
to the handsome Library Edition of Miss Braddon's
Romances. Already that one-volumed issue of her
popular fictions makes a goodly row upon our book-
shelves. Yet, even now, the series is still incom-
plete. We don't imply, of course, when saying
this, any reference merely to the fair prospect Miss
Braddon's admirers (and Mudie, for one, could tell
how numerous they are) have before them, in the
remembrance that she is still in the early summer of
her life, and to all apparance, judging from her
current serial tale in Belgravia, " Birds of Prey,"
in the fullness of her powers and just in mid career
as a delightful raconteur. Our allusion in saying, as
we have just now done, that even yet this uniform
series of her works in a Library Edition, voluminous
though it has already become, remains incomplete,
has reference solely to those novels or romances
which she has already, with her facile hand, currente
calamo, produced and actually completed. It is
worth remembering, too—so industriously employed
has Miss Braddon been since first she began to evi-
dence her capabilities as a novelist or romancist—
that already she has penned with her own hand,
swiftly and apparently without an effort, thirteen
of these more or less elaborate works of fiction.
Numbering them up—as three volume novels—
here are a set of works representing
as many as thirty-nine octavo volumes altogether !
And this cannot but appear all the more remark-
able when, on turning to Routledge's Biographical
Dictionary, descriptive of eminent living characters
of both sexes, we find among the few facts therein
recorded at page 99, in regard to Miss Mary Eliza-
beth Braddon, that she was born in Soho-square,
in 1837. So that—authoress though she is already
of as many as thirteen elaborately constructed
works of fiction, representing as a mere set of books
as many as nine-and-thirty volumes octavo—our
novelist, after all, is only now in her thirtieth year.
Seven years ago she brought out (this was at the
Strand Theatre, by the way, in the March of 1860)
a comedietta, entitled "Love in Arcadia." The year
after that, in the January of 1861, she brought out
" Garibaldi and other Poems"—just as two or three
years before that she had taken sundry flights in the
Poet's Corner of one or two of the provincial news-
papers. Otherwise, her literary energies have been
exclusively devoted to the cultivation of her un-
questionably great and sometimes brilliant powers
as a prose story-teller. How energetically she
has been cultivating those powers—as has been
evidenced by the mere amount of work actually
accomplished within an interval of eight or
ten years, at the most—we have but just now
indicated. If we remember rightly, it was
in a charming little serial, edited by Dr.
Charles Mackay, a little twopenny weekly entitled
Robin Goodfellow, that Miss Braddon made her first
hit, that she firet attained anything at all like popu-
larity or reputation. The success thus achieved
was won for her by the issuing there and then
from the press of " Lady Audley's Secret."
Prior to that the authoress of " Lady Audley,"
and of Lady Audley's now numerous successors,
had written, unnoticed by the public at large,
novels that, now that her name has become famous,
her publishers have induced her to revise with her
own hand—whenever her better judgment tells her
that such revision would be advisable—the precursors
of her popularity, the avant couriers of her reputation.
Such was the reprint in a collected form, revised, and
partly re-written, of the last volume added to this
Library. Edition of Miss Braddon's Novels, a reprint
already commented upon in these columns, namely,
that of an early story of her's, if not indeed the earliest
of all her stories, entitled " The Trail of the Serpent."
Such, again, is the new volume here submitted to
our consideration—her romance of " Lady Lisle."
Two others of these reprints have still to follow—
" Ralph the Bailiff," and " The Captain of the
Vulture." And then—with the reissue in this
popular form of one of her very latest fictions,
" The Lady's Mile," not yet added to the
Library Edition—we presume that the whole
of the already very ample series of fictions
produced by Miss Braddou at so early an
age and with such astonishing rapidity, will have
been fairly completed. When it has been remarked'
that the earlier works of Miss Braddon which
are being thus reprinted in volumes uniform with
her more well known romances have been revised
by her, and even here and there in parts re-written,
it must not in any way be imagined that the dis-
tinctive character of each as an earlier production
from an artist hand that has since then won great
cunning to itself by practice, or in other words by
experience, is in any way obliterated. It is not so.
The work of art, such as it is, is there in its integrity.
More crude in its colouring. k aulty in drawing it may
be distorted in foreshortening—in error in perspec-
tive. But none the less interesting—to our notion
far more interesting—on that very account, are these
earlier sketches ; sometimes, as it were, mere
sketches in sepia, or neutral tints, though often bril-
liantly coloured here and there, in 'The of the
obvious immaturity of the artist's powers at the
period of their original production. Always devoting
her very first attention as a novelist to the con-
struction of an interesting plot, Miss Braddon has
here, in "Lady Lisle," given precocious evidence of
her extraordinary skill in that direction. The
reader's curiosity is awakened at the very outset.
Incident follows incident with rapid succession.
There is a mystery hinted at almost at starting, and
that mystery, bewildering enough from the
very commencement, becomes rapidly more and
more inscrutable. Yet, tangled though the
thread of the narrative is with surprising in-
genuity, the skill with which it is eventually un-
ravelled is yet more remarkable by far. The scene
opens—as it closes—at Lislewood Park, in Sussex.
Claribel is the heroine. Major Granville Varney
is the evil genius of the book—the low villain or
ruffian, half accomplice, half tool of the Major, being
one Gilbert Arnold, first of all a poacher, afterwards
the low-brewed ranter at a little Bethel. As to
Captain Arthur Walsingham, who marries the
widow of Sir Rupert, he contrives somehow be-
fore the tale is quite told out to win upon the
reader's sympathies in spite of all his many
and wholly undeniable shortcomings. Lightly
pencilled though the entire sketch is, it is
not unworthy of taking its place among the
more vigorously wrought out productions from the
hand of the same rapid and industrious artist—the
hand that has since then revealed to us the lime-
walk at Audley Court, the daring designs of
Henry Dunbar, the favourite haunts of Aurora
Floyd, and all those other varied scenes and people
she has, during these last ten years, been rapidly
conjuring into seeming life by the force of her
creative imagination.

Pp.

IMPORTANT DECISION.—LIABILITY OF RAIL
ROADS FOR LOST LUGGAGE. - Dorothea Raw-
son, a married woman, brought suit in a New York
court against the Pennsylvania Railroad Company
recently for her luggage, wearing apparel, and jewel-
lery for ordinary wear, valued at over $3,000, lost on
the train of the defendants, on which she was a pas-
senger, through a collision. The jury gave her a
verdict for the full amount claimed, and the de-
fendants appealed. The opinion of the general
term, delivered by Mr. Justice Clarke, decides that
a wife's wearing apparel, the gift of her husband, is
hers in law so far as to enable her to maintain
suit for it, and that a railroad company is liablo for
a passenger's luggage as a common carrier, unless
there is a positive waiver by contract of his right
by the passenger, and that this contract cannot
arise by any notice printed on the ticket or ot:_
wise. It further decides that what is reasonable
baggage is a question dependent on the circum-
stances of each case, to be decided by the jury on
the evidence.
The following items will give Queen Emma an
idea of what her visit cost Uncle Sam he bill of
Willard's Hotel for Queen Emma and her suite of
ten or twelve persons, from the 13th to the 22d of
last August, was $1,867. The department paid
this and a livery bill of $255, and other bills to the
amount of $233 on account of her visit,