6 which the story turns upon the forlorn and some extent from the traditions of her hopeless passion of a doctor, already mar- school, Her two last books are neither ried, for a fair young patient, who returns his love. The doctor's wife, in a fit of tragic but only too clear-sighted jealousy, poisons herself, and leaves him free; but the poor, pretty, consumptive Madeline, who is the object of his love, marries somebody else just at the moment when her physician is beginning to permit himself to think of approaching her, and henceforward can only purchase a little intercourse with her hopeless lover by falling very ill and dying in his hands. Now it goes utterly against all social morality to introduce lovemaking between a doctor and his patient. There are even hard-hearted critics who have objected to the idyll of melancholy passion as set forth in the pure and pensive pages of Doctor Antonio,' notwithstanding that the scene is Italy, and the story as spotless as imagination could conceive. Doctors and patients have no right to fall in love with each other; it goes in the face of all the proprieties and expediencies of life. A young physician may, it is true, be permitted to appreciate the beauty and excellence of the sweet nurse in a sickroom, who ministers along with him to the sick mother or father or brother; but when she herself becomes his patient, a wall of brass rises between them. Yet Mr. Yates's sympathies evidently go with the physician, and it appears only natural to him that the goldenhaired patient (pale gold in this case, which is angelicnot red gold, which is of the demons) should quite obliterate in Dr. Wilmot's mind the reserved and dark-complexioned wife who waits for him at home. This poor woman does not right herself even by suicide. The facts of the case give her husband, when he finds them out, a great shock; but not so great a shock as does the marriage of the delicate Madeline, who, angel of purity as she is, evidently feels it quite legitimate on her part to recall her medical lover, and enact little scenes of despairing love on her deathbed, and die happy in his arms, with a sweet indifference to the fact of her husband's existence. It is no doubt very melancholy that people should obstinately persist in marrying the wrong person, as indeed is visible in real life as well as in novels; but how far it is expedient to call in the right man, whom you have not married, as your medical attendant, may, we think, be questioned. The suggestion is not a pleasant one. As Miss Thomas has been mentioned in the beginning of this paper, we may say, in justice to her, that she has freed herself to immoral (to speak of), nor horsey, which is akin to immoral. They are very frothy, and deal with a world which is not the ordinary world around us a world where there is either very gorgeous upholstery or very shabby meanness, and no medium between them; but still the books are not nasty. 'Played Out' in fact, is not a bad story. The little heroine Kate is very tiresome in her changeableness, but still she is a well-known character, whom we have met so often that we feel a certain interest in her, and indignation at the amazingly senseless way in which her prospects are thrown away. The device by which this is accomplished is one which is becoming about as general as the golden hair. It is used in both Miss Thomas's books in Cometh up as a Flower' in a lively and clever novel called Archie Lovell,' which is a little earlier in date- and no doubt in a host of others if we could but remember. It is a device not very creditable either to the invention or the good taste which suggested it. In all these books the heroines are made to spend a night accidentally in the society of a man with whom they have been known to flirt. It is done in the purest innocence, and in that curious fortuitous way with which things happen only in novels. Chance alone on both sides brings it about, but yet it becomes known, and the consequences are generally disastrous. Kate Lethbridge, for instance, in Played Out' is persuaded to step into a railway carriage in which her friend is going off to London, and which is supposed to wait ten minutes at a little country station, to enable him to spend these ten minutes pleasantly. And the moment she has entered it the train sweeps away, and the young lady's reputation is ruined for life. This expedient, it must be allowed, is a very poor one; and it is a curious sign of the absence of all real inventive power in this kind of literature, that it should be so often employed. In Called to Account,' Miss Thomas enters upon the less safe ground of married life, and displays to us, among a number of "grandly-simple" beauties, with the usual sublime attribute of golden locks, a scanty-haired pale-coloured woman, who makes mischief and destroys domestic peace, yet turns out very good at the end, and goes into the Sister of Mercy business with much applause on all hands. Here, too, an unhappy pair are condemned to rouse everybody's suspicion, and to risk เ * Played Out ;' 'Called to Account.' their character by being shut up together in a cave for some twenty-four hours or so, though happily, as they are all but killed by the experience, scandal is silenced. Certain curious symptoms of the kind of culture prevalent in the region to which this class of literature belongs, are, however, to be gleaned out of these books a real contribution to our knowledge of our species. The first of these gives us a sketch of the favourite literature of the hero, who is, like so many heroes, a man of letters publishing novels in magazines, and otherwise contrib uting to the instruction of the public. He is, besides, a clerk in a government office, a university man, and has suddenly and unexpectedly become heir to a fine estate. We are told to glance round his sitting-room in his absence, with the view of throwing light upon his tastes and pursuits and this is what we find: "The recesses on either side of the fire place were occupied with broad shelves, and these were filled with books— original editions, most of them, of the standard modern novelists. An independent oak book-stand, placed within reach of the one arm-chair in the room, might be supposed to contain the more special favour ites of that room's occupant, and there Fielding and Smollett, Wycherly and Ben Jonson, Spenser and Sidney, Bon Gaultier, Bacon, Ad dison, Ingoldsby, and a host of other wits, poets, essayists, dramatists, humorists, and scholars, stood in amicable array." pur Our readers will admire the admirable conjunction of names herein assembled, and the charming way in which they relieve and heighten each the effect of the other. Bacon and Addison leashed together, and marching between Bon Gaultier and Ingoldsby, is a true stroke of genius; and there can be no doubt that a very peculiar light is thrown upon the "tastes and suits, if not on the character of my hero," by the fact that his shelves are filled with the standard modern novelists in the "original editions." It is intelligible that people who read nothing but standard modern novelists should produce such books as those which are now under review. The second passage we shall quote is also a description of a room a room which the hero -again a literary man of Called to Account,' thinks so perfect, that he never tires of raving about the exquisite taste which has arranged it. It must have been done by a woman of genius essentially human," he says. We do not go into the paraphernalia of silver lamps," shallow silver urns, classical in design and execution," and reflected 66 · in "immense sheets of plate-glass," but go on to its more purely artistic features: "On either side of these glasses were niches (oval-shaped at the top in the wall, which was coloured a faint warm cream-colour) containing marble statuettes about two feet high. Venus and Hercules, Apollo and Diana, were chosen as the respective types of beauty and strength. In the In one recess by the side of the fireplace, a small semi oblique piano stood, with a pile of loosely arranged music on it. corresponding recess there was a ruby velvet shrine, composed of a pedestal and curtains for the glorious goddess, who is grander and more perfect in her mutilated beauty than anything else the world has seen in marble, a nearly lifesize copy of Our Lady of Milo.' And pictured suggestions of the past and the future were not wanting; for Raphael and the Fornarina, Dante and his Beatrice, and a Madonna with the warm soft beauty of a moonbeam, all looked upon one from the walls." This amazing combination strikes the poet-hero as half divine. Very likely Miss Thomas imagines that the relation of the Fornarina to Raphael, and that of Beatrice to Dante, were identical; and that it is very fine and classical to talk of the Venus as Our Lady of Milo. Such wonderful exhibitions of the uneducated intelligence which has caught up a name here and there, and is bold enough to think it knows what they mean, are very astonishing. Truly, a little learning is a dangerous thing. We have gone as far as human patience can go in our survey, and leave off with the certainty that we have left a great deal that is more objectionable still untouched. In one novel, which we do not attempt to notice here, but which lately passed through our hands, we remember that the chief interest turns on the heroine's discussion with herself as to whether or not she will become the mistress of a very fascinating man she happens to be brought in contact with. Her decision eventually is on the side of virtue, but she takes the whole question into consideration with the most frank impartiality. In another † the central point is a certain secret passage leading from the chamber of the profligate master of a house into a room occupied by an old general and his charming young wife. a passage which the villain uses once too often, finding himself at last in presence of the insulted husband. But it is needless to multiply instances. It would be a task beyond our Which shall it be?' † Guy Deverell.' men at the time of Rome's downfall. The comparison, no doubt, has been made again and again, and yet society has not become utterly depraved. But yet it has come to have many very unlovely, very unpromising features in it. We are no preacher to call English ladies to account, and we have no tragical message to deliver, even had we the necessary pulpit to do it in; but it certainly would be well if they would put a stop to nasty novels. It would be well for literature, well for the tone of society, and well for the young people who are growing up used to this kind of reading. Considering how low the tone of literary excellence is, and how little power of exciting interest exists after all in these equivocal productions, the sacrifice would not seem a great one. powers to enter into all the varieties of immorality which the novelists of the day have ingeniously woven into their stories. In these matters the man who writes is at once more and less bold than the woman; he may venture on positive criminality to give piquancy to his details, but it is the female novelist who speaks the most plainly, and whose best characters revel in a kind of innocent indecency, as does the heroine of Cometh up as a Flower.' Not that the indecency is always innocent; but there are cases in which it would seem the mere utterance of a certain foolish daring-an ignorance which longs to look knowing-a kind of immodest and indelicate innocence which likes to play with impurity. This is the most dismal feature among all these disagreeable phenomena Nasty thoughts, ugly suggestions, an imagination which prefers the unelean, is almost more appalling than the facts of actual depravity, because It is good to turn aside from these feverit has no excuse of sudden passion or temp- ish productions and we think it right to tation, and no visible boundary. It is a make as distinct a separation as the printshame to women so to write; and it is a er's skill can indicate between the lower and shame to the women who read and accept the higher ground in fiction to the better as a true representation of themselves and fare which is still set before us. Though they their ways the equivocal talk and fleshly in- seem to flourish side by side, and though clinations herein attributed to them. Their the public, according to such evidence as patronage of such books is in reality an adop- can be obtained on the subject, seems to tion and acceptance of them. It may be throw itself with more apparent eagerness done in carelessness, it may be done in that upon the hectic than upon the wholesome, mere desire for something startling which still we cannot but hope that Mr. Anthony the monotony of ordinary life is apt to pro- Trollope has in reality a larger mass of duce; but it is debasing to everybody con- readers than Miss Braddon, and we are very cerned. Women's rights and women's sure no sensational romancist of her school duties have had enough discussion, perhaps goes half so near the general heart as does even from the ridiculous point of view. the author of the Village on the Cliff.' We have most of us made merry over Mr. There are still the seven thousand men in Mill's crotchet on the subject, and over the Israel who have not bent the knee to Baal, Dr. Marys and Dr. Elizabeths; but yet a notwithstanding that mournful prophets in woman has one duty of invaluable impor- all ages will persist in thinking themselves tance to her country and her race which can- alone faithful. Mr. Trollope writes too not be over-estimated—and that is the du- much to be always at his best. He has exty of being pure. There is perhaps noth-hausted too many of the devices of fiction to ing of such vital consequence to a nation. Our female critics are fond of making demonstrations of indignation over the different punishment given by the world to the sin of man and that of woman in this respect. But all philosophy notwithstanding, and leaving the religious question untouched, there can be no possible doubt that the wickedness of man is less ruinous, less disastrous to the world in general, than the wickedness of woman. That is the climax of all misfortunes to the race. One of our cleverest journals took occasion the other day to point out the resemblance of certain superficial fashions among ourselves to the fashions prevalent among Roman wo be able to find always an original suggestion for his plot; but there is nobody living who has added so many pleasant people to our acquaintance, or given us so many neighbourly interests out of our own immediate circle. We are disposed to protest against the uncomfortable vacillation between two lovers which has been for some time past his favourite topic; but we do so only in the most friendly, and, indeed, affectionate way. High-pitched constancy is no doubt rare nowadays. On the one hand, it is by no means always a matter of certainty that the woman a man has been accepted by, or the * ' The Claverings;'Last Chronicle of Barset.' man whom the woman accepts, are beyond dispute the best and most suitable for them. Friends of persons about to be married are on all hands agreed on that point. And, on the other side, we agree with Mr. Trollope that, as a matter of amusement, love-making is decidedly superior to either croquet or cricket. But the fact remains, that the man and the woman who, without very grave cause, change their minds in this important matter, are seldom satisfactory people. Harry Clavering, though not a bad fellow in the main, looks very foolish when his first love and his second love are squabbling over him—or at least, if not squabbling, mutually determining to resign, and sacrifice themselves to his happiness. It is not an elevated position for a man. The reader feels slightly ashamed of him when he has to tell his tale, and submit to everybody's comment, and realise that the part he has played has been a very poor one. We can forgive our hero for making a tragic mistake which ruins or compromises him fatally, or we can forgive him for the most stupid blunder in any other branch of his affairs; but a blunder which necessitates the intervention of three or four women in his love-making, and which is really arranged by them, he himself being very secondary in the matter, is humiliating, and goes against the very character of a hero. It seems to be Mr. Trollope's idea that, so long as he is faithful to her, a woman can see no blemish in a man whom she has once loved. But we fear this is far from being the fact. On the contrary, we should have been inclined to suppose that Florence Burton not only would never have been able to banish from her mind a certain (carefully suppressed, no doubt) contempt for her fickle lover, but that she would have indulged in a sound, reasonable, womanly hatred ever after, for all the kind intercessors who came between them. Women are neither so passive nor so grateful as they are made out to be; and a man's disdain for the girl who, having known me could decline' upon the lower heart and lower brain, is perhaps a few degrees less profound than the woman's contempt for the actor in a similar defalcation. It was mean of Florence Burton to have him again after he had forsaken her, and unspeakably mean of him to consent to the re-transfer, and to be happy ever after. The only person whom we have any sympathy with in the matter is the poor, faulty beauty, Julia, who was so dreadfully wrong in other respects, but yet not to blame in this. Here, however, is the vast difference between such a work as even 66 LIVING AGE. VOL. VI. 214. the faultiest and least satisfactory of Mr. Trollope's and the best of the infe ior school Deep, tragic passion is not in them, although they are chiefly about love-making, and their perplexities and troubles and complications of plot all centre in this one subject. But the atmosphere is the purest English daylight: none of those fair women, none of those clean, honourable, unexalted English gentlemen, have any terrible secrets in their past that cannot bear the light of day. There may be unpleasant talk at their clubs, and they may make no exhibition of horror but they don't mix it up with their history, or bring it into their intercourse with their friends. Now and then a woman among them may make a mercenary marriage, or a man among them be led into a breach of constancy; but they live like the most of us, exempt from gross temptation, and relying upon human natural incidents, contrariety of circumstances, failure of fortune, perversity of heart, for the plan of their romance. On this level we miss the primitive passions; but we get all those infinite shades of character which make society in fact, as well as society in a book, amusing and interesting. In Mr. Trollope's books, there are no women who throw their glorious hair over the breast of any chance companion; indeed, the red-haired young woman, exuberant in flesh and blood, and panting for sensation, is unknown in them. So great a difference does it make when you step out of the lower into the higher world. In short, here is a novelist to whom the colour of a woman's hair is not of first importance. Lily Dale, for instance, gives us no clue as to this important point; perhaps it is mentioned we do not remember at all events it is no way written upon her character. Our own impression is, that it must have been a kind of soft brown, a subdued sort of framework for her refined head, not any blazing panoply. But anyhow her author is indifferent on the subject. To him her hair is clearly a secondary matter. He takes, strange to say, a great deal more trouble to show us what was passing through her mind. And it is true that he does reveal this with an amount of variety which has pointed many a gentle joke against him. His knowledge of the thoughts that go through a girl's mind when she is in the full tide of her individual romance is almost uncanny in its minuteness. How did he find it all out? What tricksy spirit laid all those secrets open to him? But, wonderful as his insight is into their ways and works, there is one thing for which Mr. Trollope deserves our real gratitude. It is not he 1 tio who makes us ashamed of our girls. He and inconsistency of a real personage; we feel inclined to laugh and cry and storm at him all in a breath. His obstinate perversity his sham sentiments and his true, which mingle together in an inextricable way as they do in nature, not as they generally do in art - his despair and confusion of mind, and quaint arrogance and exaggerated humility-make up a wonderfully perfect picture. The cunning of the craftsman here reaches to so high a point that it becomes a kind of inspiration. There is no high tone of colour, or garish light, to give fictitious importance to the portrait. Every tint is laid on, and every line made, with an entire harmony and subordination of detail which belongs to the most perfect art. Mr. Trollope's power of pleasing is so great, and his facility of execution so unbounded, that he is seduced into giving us a great many sketches which will not bear close examination. But so long as he continues to vindicate his own powers by such an occasional inspiration as this, we can afford to forgive him a great many Alice Vavasours and Harry Claverings. The household at Plumstead, in its way, is almost as good. The Archdeacon's fierce wrath against his son, who is going to marry against his will-his suspicion of everybody conspiring against him to bring this about, and at the same time his instant subjugation by pretty Grace, and rash adoption of her on the spot is altogether charming. Mr. Trollope is about the only writer we know (with, perhaps, one or two exceptions) who realises the position of a sensible and right-minded woman among the ordinary affairs of the world. Mrs Grantley's perception at once of her husband's character and his mistakes her careful abstinence from active interference - her certainty to come in right at the end-her half-amused, Yet would we chide our beloved novelist for his Last Chronicle.' We did not ask that this chronicle should be the last. We were in no burry to be done with our old friends. And there are certain things which he has done without consulting us against which we greatly demur To kill Mrs. Proudie was murder, or manslaughter at the least. We do not believe she had any disease of the heart; she died not by natural causes, but by his hand in a fit of weariness or passion. When we were thinking no evil, lof some sudden disgust seized him, and he slew her at a blow. The crime was so uncalled for, that we not only shudder at it, but resent it. It was cruel to us; and it rather looks asif he did not know how to get through the crisis in a more natural way. Then as to Lily Dale. Mr. Trollope's readers have been cheated about this young woman. It is a wilful abandonment of all her natural responsibilities when such a girl writes Old Maid after her name. She has no business to do it; and what is the good of being an author, we should like to know, if a man cannot provide more satisfactorily for his favourite characters? Lily will not like it when she has tried it a little longer. She will find the small house dull, and will miss her natural career; and if she should take to social science or philosophy, whose fault will it be but Mr. Trollope's? On the other hand, though he has thus wound-half-troubled spectatorship, in short, of all ed us in our tenderest feelings, our author has in this book struck a higher note than he has yet attempted. We do not know, in all the varied range of his productions, of any bit of character-painting so profound and so tragic as that of Mr. Crawley. Though there are scenes in Orley Farm' which approach it in intensity of interest, Lady Mason is not to be compared with the incumbent of Hogglestock, He is exasperating to the last degree almost as exasperating to the reader as he must have been to his poor wife; and yet there is a grandeur about the halfcrazed, wildered man a mingled simpliciAnd subtlety in the conception to which we we cannot easily find a parallel in ficHe has all the curious consistency `n. the annoyances her men-kind make for themselves, her consciousness of the futility of all decided attempts to set them right, and patient waiting upon the superior logic of events, is one of those "bits" which may scarcely call the attention of the careless reader, and yet is a perfect triumph of profound and delicate observation. As for old Mr. Harding, our grief for his loss is yet too fresh to permit us to speak of him. We should like to go to Barchester, and see his stall in the cathedral, and hear his favourite anthems, and linger a little by his grave. Honour to the writer who, amid so much that is false and vile and meretricious in current literature, beautifies our world and our imagination with such creations as these! |