New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1900-08-05
FICTION.
THE LITERARY DEVELOPMENT OF JOHN
OLIVER HOBBIES.

subtitle a continuation" and "a sequel" The
confirmed reader of fiction expects when he
takes it up to find it also a novel but that IS
the last word in the world to be applied to this
DOCK Mrs. Craigie has never emphasized the
story, considered as story, in any of her writ
ings. Fiction is, indeed, to her chiefly the
vehicle for the exploitation of a gift for pecul-
iarly imaginative psychology. She has always
made much of passion, she has always made
huch OF manners but she has never concerned
herself so much with the identification of them
with symmetrical works of literary art as she
has with the f1eeting representation of them in
one odd aspect or another. She is an amateur
of emotions. She sees that they are the stuff Of
tragedy, but she handles them with the touch
of one who, knowing the dramatic spirit is yet
scarcely st home with the dramatic FORM or,
perhaps, cares little to be at home with that
form. Her waywardness, her limitations. are
more clearly disclosed in Robert Orange than
in any of the predecessors of that book.
In The School for Saints though there was
not much STORY" there was narrative; the sub
stance of the book set forth with lucidity.
| Robert Orange" is formless utterly One gath
ers that the hero loved the heroine, that they
married believing her first husband to be dead,
that the latter was really living, that the lovers
then promptly separated, one to become
actress the other priest. 1t is made plain that
while events finally gave Robert and his Bright
the opportunity to marry and live happy ever
after, each was true to a vocation, and lived
alone, to work and to suffer. The lives of sew
eral friends of the lovers linked with theirs,
and the experiences of these people engage the
authors serious attention. But when we have
stated all this, which ought to provide the main
interest of the book, have really designated
matters which for Mrs. Craigie would seem to
have been almost Irrelevant. The whole dreary
business-and Robert Orange" is almost uni
formly dreary, from beginning to ends made
to serve simply as an excuse for endless talk.
Every talks, talks and talks. They talk
about their souls about religion, about politics.
about love, about one another. What they say
is frequently clever but we doubt if it is human.
1t is inconceivabe that in 1869, the year in
which the action" is supposed to take place,
any more than in the year 1900, men and
women, racked as the people of Robert Orange"
are racked by the stormiest feelings, could dis
course with the maddening sapience that CHAR
acterzes countless utterances quoted in Mrs
Craigie's pages. These splendid personages-
they are all neffably spendid-rarely meet with
out plunging into the most toploftical conversl-
tons through which recur with unconscious alb
surdty the names of Pascal and Saint Angus
tine, Dante and Marcus Aureus, Montaigne
and Lucretius Granting culture to a figure in
a novel one must grant that figure the privilege
of showing it. But he must show 1t IKE a hu-
man being, not though he were mechahcaI
mouthpiece for the author
The trouble with Robert Orange" is that not
a single character in it is actually realized on
the printed page. The hero is least of all
creature of flesh and blood We will not call
him a prig because the prg, after all, is tact
in society Robert Orange is not fact, but the
shadow of a shadow. We asked to believe
that he is more than clever, that he is a genius.
DisraeIi is introduced his patron, and as we
all know, the incompatible Oriental wasted no
time on men of straw. But not even his testl-
monv as Mrs Craigie artfully presents it, can
induce us to accept Orange living entity.
AS with Orange so it is with all the others.
They are among the most elusive phantoms ever
put on paper. The mere fact, however that 1t
is worth while so seriously to consider this pro-
ducton suggests that it must have positive
merits 1t is, despite its unreality, Il most read~
able book Mrs. Craigie has wit, she has knows
edge of people and things. Again and again
she gives us brief flashes of sharp insight, COM
ments on life which none the less convincing
because they have a certain acidulated quality.
Robert Orange is not only sad book, it seems
a bitter one But if the author takes hard
views of life she is not sombre or heavy. The
vivacity which has always constituted her first
charm is present in her latest composition. Now
and then she threatens with WEAKNESS, when
she becomes befogged with her meta
physics and splits hairs with too much perth