The Sun.
London, England, 1868-08-20 00:00:00

LITERATURE,

Miss Braddon's New Story.

Dead Sea Fruit. By the Author of " Lady
Audley's Secret." Three Vols. "Ward, Lock,
and Tyler.
Miss Braddon's industry keeps pace with her in-
ventiveness, and neither appears in any way as yet
to have outrun her popularity. So rapidly has she
poured three-volumed novel after three-volumed
novel from the press, that we must acknowledge to
have long since lost our reckoning. Ranged side
by side, her works would already fill a very long
book-shelf. And, what is more remarkable
than either the fecundity of her imagination
or the energy with which her indefatigable pen has
recorded her fluent and vivid fancies as they sprang
into existence, is the undeniable fact that her books
have been read far and wide by eager thousands,
one by one, and as swiftly as they have been produced.
Through the medium of the circulating libraries,
from Mudie downwards, the original editions have
been thumbed thread-bare, and others, of various
forms and sizes one-volumed reprints, all of
them—now a library edition in ribbed blue cloth,
now a cheaper railway edition in gaudily coloured
boards—have been issued, and bought up by ready
purchasers for reperusal and for preservation after-
wards. Scarcely any reader of modern fiction is
there, we should imagine, who has not long ago
become perfectly well acquainted with the
windings of the intricate plots constituting
the distinguishing glamour respectively of
" Lady Audley's Secret," of " Aurora Floyd," of
" Eleanor's Victory," of " Henry Dunbar," of
" The Doctor's Wife," and of other less celebrated
narratives from the same hand, down to the last
Completed twin stories—" Birds of Prey," and its
sequel, " Charlotte's Inheritance." Hardly has
the doubly-lengthy thread of that six-volumed
tale been wound up and fairly completed, when
another work, issued, iu a manner, simultaneously
with " Charlotte's Inheritance," is rapidly dashed
off in instalments as a serial tale in Belgravia, and,
so soon as brought to a close in that popular maga-
zine, collected into three volumes, and produced as
a separate publication. " Dead Sea Fruit" is the
title of it—Eustace Thorburn, a young poet, being
the junior hero of the narrative, while the senior
hero of it is the author of "Dion," and in a double
sense of " Dion'sDisappointments"—to wit a hand-
some, blasé, cold-hearted, selfish, cynical roué, by
name Harold Jerningham. As to the relationship
in which these two stand towards each other, we
shall say nothing further than that—" thereby hangs
a tale." Upon the fact of that relationship the
whole interest of the story hinges. Eliminate
it—that is, that one secret—from the story, and
the whole interest of the plot disappears instan-
taneously. The search after that one particular is
at the heart of the whole narrative. It is the goldea
thread running deviously through it all. Take it
away and the glitter and splendour of the whole will
be found to have vanished.
The story opens in the tranquil Belgian city of Vil-
lebrumeuse. There Eustace Thorburn is a tutor at a
school. There he receives news, in chapter one, of
the death of his widowed mother, the pathos of
whose history, as Celia Mayfield, runs all through
the book, suffusing it with a tender and graceful
charm. Celia's brother, Eustace Thorburu's " Uncle
Dan"—Daniel Mayfield—is one of the most effec-
tive characters in the narrative. He is a reputable
sort of John Burley—a writer upon the London
Press, with great parts, but with little or no care
for the solid advancement of his reputation.
A. fellow of large heart and of some humour,
devotedly attached to his nephew, of whom he is
overweeningly proud, and tenderly reminiscent of
poor dead-and-gone Sissy or Cely—the Celia of the
book—whose marred repute Daniel Mayfield is
always burning to avenge. Through Uncle Dan's
influence as a journalist and magazine contributor,
Eustace, on quitting Belgium upon his mother's
death, obtains, through Mr. Desmond, the Editor of
the Areopagus, an engagement down in the country
as Secretary to a gifted and gentle-hearted French
exile, one Theodore de Bergerac, who is engaged
upon the production of a great literary work, to
wit, " The History of Superstition," recalling to
mind Austin Caxton's projected " History of
Human Error,"—and who, in his widower-seclu-
sion, resides with his young slip of a daughter
Helen, as the guest rather than the tenant, at Green-
lands, of Theodore de Bergerac's old frien I, the
fashionable, flighty, heartless, accomplished Harold
Jerningham. The darker side of Harold's cha-
racter is unknown to the innocent-minded Theo-
dore—who sees his friend, and knows his friend
only at his best. Harold Jerningham, it should be
remarked, is living apart from his wife—this, quite
courteously, if not, as one might almost sayamicably,
by mutual agreement. Laurence Desmond, again,
(already mentioned as editor of the Areopagus)
is described as having been once (before her mar-
riage to Harold) an aspirant to the hand of Emily
Jerningham. Between Mr. Desmond and Mrs.
Jerningham there is maintained throughout the
tale a platonic attachment amounting even to affec-
tionate intimacy, breathing rather of the spirit of
dreamland than of reality. Desmond, in point of fact,
wearies of this association—more particularly when
he falls in love with Lucy Alford, otherwise Miss St.
Albans, a young provincial actress, the only daugh-
ter of Laurence's Desmond's old University tutor
or coach, Tristram Alford, now degenerated to a
drunken hanger-on about the theatre in which his
child earns a hard and precarious living for them
both. There is a good deal of fun in the theatrical
scenes here introduced, but we have had this often
enough before—as, for example, in the immor-
tal Crummleses of " Nicholas Nickleby," and,
still later, from the same master hand,
in the outrageously ridiculous impersonation of
Hamlet by Mr. Wopsle, as recounted by Pip in
" Great Expectations." Nevertheless, Mr. De
Mortemar, as he is here depicted, is worth looking
at, and can certainly not be looked at, however cur-
sorily, without a laugh. Such are the materials
out of which the story is worked up—
and how cleverly, how ingeniously worked up
those alone can say who have read the volumes
through consecutively down to the very end of the
third. For, there it is, in that third volume, but
more particularly towards the close of it, that the
artistic ability of Miss Braddon as a thoroughly
skilled an 1 practised novelist becomes the most
signally manifested. The eclaircissement is
admirably worked out. The terror awak-
ened by the disappearance of Eustace Thor-
burn at the very climax of the story is power-
fully described. The storm, the rising tide, the
wild and fruitless search, the seeming hopelessness
of everything in regard to the young hero's fate,
all are most powerfully and pathetically depicted.
Then comes the discovery—the snatching of life
out of the very jaws of death—the recog-
nition and the reconciliation of Eustace
Thorburn and Harold Jerningham. If not the
best (which we for one cannot venture to
call it) " Dead Sea Fruit" is one among the best
of Miss Braddon's later, and as some think happier,
style as a writer of fiction. We say this, having a
predilection ourselves for her earlier romances, re-
garding still, as we do, as among the most power-
ful works she has ever produced, " Lady Audley's
Secret," " Aurora Floyd," and " Henry Dunbar."

The Handy Volume Series. 1. Shirley Brooks'
Gordian Knot. 2. William Shenstoue's Men
and Manners. 3. M. Betham Edwards' Doctor
Jacob. Bradbury, Evans, and Co.
Already, at the time of its commencement, when
issued in a limp paper binding at half-a-crown,
we have taken occasion in welcoming the reprint
of Mr. Shirley Brooks' delightful story of " The
Gordian Knot," to speak in terms of high but
eminently well-deserved commendation of the
Handy Volume Series. Since then, two more in-
stalments of the same series of repriutsjhave come to
hand, together with another copy of the " Gordian
Knot"—each volumette prettily bound in limp cloth
of either cherry colour or apple green. William
Shenstone's essays on " Men and Manners" consti-
tute the contents of the second volume, which will
now, we doubt not, for the first time since they
were written, popularise the prose effusions of an
author hitherto exclusively known to the generality

(and but slightly even in that capacity) as a
poet. The third volume, as intimated in
the heading to this brief additional notice
of the Handy Volume Series so far as it has
yet gone, is devoted to the reissuing, in a cheap and
charming form, of one of the happiest productions
of not the least successful among our female no-
velists, namely, the " Doctor Jacob" of Miss M.
Betham Edwards. If the same care be evidenced
in the selection of the works thus honoured by being
republished in a form so peculiarly attractive, The
Handy Volume Series bids fair to beat all other com-
petitors out of the field as a railway library printed
in exquisitely readable type, and fitted, by reason
of its dainty size, for any one's pouch or pocket.

Ten 7housand Wonderful Things. Edited by E.
F. King, M.A. George lioutledge and Sons.
If amusement cannot be found in these 684
profusely illustrated pages, the reader must be dull
indeed. For these " Ten Thousand Wonderful
'Things" comprise " whatever is Marvellous and
Rare, Curious, Eccentric, and Extraordinary in all
Ages and Nations"—the letterpress being " En-
riched with Hundreds of Authentic Illustrations."
The whole has been carefully edited and
compiled by Mr. Edmund Fillingham King,
a literary Master of Arts already honourably known
as the biographer of Sir Isaac Newton. Curious
antique watches—Magician's Mirrors—Monstrous
Head Dresses—Distaffs—Timbrels—the Champion
Figg with shaven pate - Coral Reefs - Somnambulism
—Sword Breakers— Pot Helmets—Origin of the
Use of Tobacco—Loadstones—these and a multi-
tude of other equally odd and diversified themes
are here described and illustrated in a man-
ner at once the most whimsical and the most
matter of fact. Mere fragments though these
paragraph inscriptions are, each fragment is com-
plete in itself : and, besides, being invariably enter-
taining, both in subject and treatment, are often
singularly instructive. Large though the aggre-
gate amount of reading here brought together from
quarters the most remote, the book bears witness to
a far larger amount of reading on the part of its
industrious, or rather let us say, its inde-
fatigable compiler. It is a very treasury of
valuable and out-of-the-way information—a re-
pertory of curious and eccentric knowledge. As
a fantastic prose companion volume to the " Thou-
sand and One Gems of English Poetry," edited by
Dr. Charles Mackay, already issued from the press
by the same publishers, Mr. King's " Ten Thou3and
Wonderful Things" may be secure of what it most
unquestionably deserves —an immediate and im-
mense circulation.

gf: j6,4A,
Court uullat

HER MAJESTY.

PENSION WALLIS, LUCERNE, August 17.

The Queen, accompanied by Princess Louise,
Prince Leopold, and Princess Beatrice, made
excursions in the neighbourhood and on the lake

yesterday.

LATEST INTELL MENGE.

(REUTER'S TELEGRAMS.)

SWITZERLAND.

BERNE, August 20.

Her Majesty Queen Victoria has, through the
English Minister here, expressed her thanks to the
Federal Council for the cordial reception she has
met with in Switzerland.