Literary Notes.

Evening Post, Volume LV, Issue 137, 11 June 1898, Page 2 (Supplement)

Literary Notes.

(PEOM OUE 81'EOIAI/ CORRESPONDENT.) London, 23rd April. ' Three Women and Mr. Frank Cardwell' is tho lengthy tillo of Mr. Pett-Ridge's latest and very readable book, and the portraits of Mr. Frank Cardwell and the three women, a plump, elderly, Jewishlooking singer, a pleasing country lass, and a thin, secretarial sort, ot girl with glasses, duly appear on the cover to point the moral and adorn the tale. The tale is v. simple and straightforward narrative of the making of a country youth into a succesaf ul barrister by the influence of three women, one of whom unkuowu to him rinds themoney for his carter, stealing part of ii< lroiu the second, her employer, who gives him the necessary encouragement, while the third — also from the country— who became the editor of a Ladies' Journal, tmpplies tho love, and it is she whom Frank Cardwell eventually marries. Mr. Pett-Ridge knows his London and Londoners by heart, and gives us so many photographs— as it were— of life in solicitors' office lodgiugs, the law courts, and the music-halls. The characters of the halls, Bella Winkworth and her agent and husband, Bennet, are drawn with much humour, but although the book is amusing, it never rises above the ' bread and cheese and kisses ' of every- day life. Love and chivalry of the highest order are the key-note of the 'Pride of Jennioo,' by Egerton and Agnes Castle. Since Mr. Anthony Hope wrote ' The Prisoner of Zenda ' there has been no novel of romance equal to this • Memoir of Captain Basil Jonnico,' which owes its inspiration to 'tie Prisonex',' and Bhould run it very close in popular favour. The story thrilled me so much that I felt strongly tempted to turn to the end to see whether all would end happily, or with the pathetic sorrow of ' tho Prisoner,' but I restrained myself that I might enjoy this capital romance, the suspense ot which is well sustained to the end. I have no intention of spoiling colonial readers' pleasure by divulging the plot. Sutfioeit to say, that although there is a castle of Tollendal in Moravia, an English hero not averse to fighting, a Princess, a lady in waiting, a rival mad with jealousy, au abundance of conflict, and a wooing aud intensity of love that makes your heart beat, it owes nothirig to the Prisoner save the general flavour of gallant chivalry that pervades it. • The Pride of Jenuico ' and Keury Harland's ' Comedies nnd Errors ' are the two books of the first quarter of 1898 that I should choose aa presents. There is a subtle charm and fragrance about Mr. Harland's ' Comedieß and Errors'— a happy title, by the way— that conjures up all sorts of graceful and beautifnl visions, such as some exquisite odour from a romantic garden occasionally brings before the mind. The power of a waft of perfume -or a snatch of melody to thrill the heart with responsive eohoes, to awaken a strong, sweet, end emotion, or to call up vistas of fantastic recollection is a taliajmau m the hands of Mr. Harlaud that enables him to take his readers to the Castle of Enchantment iv spirit and to lose themselves ' during enraptured moments among its glistening labyrinthine halls.' This subtle aroma, the delicious fragrance of flowers, the melody of birds, the sweet breath of balmy air, the gleam of sunshine, and the joy of life are over all Mr. Hurlaud's briet fx-agmentsof life, but especially piedominant iv 'Tirala-Tirala,' the little broken bar of music from au old musicalbox in a lumber-room chat not only brought baok recollections of a quaint old house, but proved tho wishing- cap, the inagio carpet, the key to the Castle of Enchantment ; iv the whiff of orange-flower in a Rouen oafe. that conjured up ghosts of luoaterious old ' rooms ' of grandmother, uncle, and mother, delightfully contrasted and exquisitely described ; and in ' Rosemary tor Rememorauce,' the bitter-sweet fragrance of the herb that capriciously recalled the image of a pathetic youthful love episode with a tender Italian girl. Mr. Harlaud with the manliness of the Englishman combines the niinbleness of the Frenchman. He is indeed cosmopolitan iv training, for he was born in St. Petersburg aud educated partly at Rome, Paris, and in the United States. Of the short story he is muster, and he has the art of picturesque phraseology, of dainty wit in dialogue, and of brilliant conversation by inference and suggestion. His women, too, are incomparable. , Although of widely different types, they all have what Mr Harlaud calls • exquisite feminity,' 'the loveliestiucarna- ' tion of the eternal feminine ' about them, and the capacity of making very evident love to the men they would marry without ever seeming in the least unwomanly. One cannot say of Mr Harland's women as one of his characters does of the sex in general — 1 Women are a pack of samenesses, and love affairs are damnable iterations.' Whether his love-affairs be gay or pathetio they are equally fascinating. "Where every stury has some charm of its own it is hard to select any for special meution, but for happy love-making and brilliant dialogue 'Merely Players,' the tale of a king who fell maaly in love with the wife whom he married by proxy, but never knew till he declared his passion, 'The Invisible Prince,' a case of mutual attraction from a meeting at a masked ball iv Vienna, and 'Flower o1o 1 the Clove,' the most intensely passionate of all the sketohes, tookjmy fancy ; while ' The Confidante,' a recollection of the Contessa of thirty to whom the boy of twenty-two gay« his love only to have it refused by her. for tear of crampiug his youth, • Petit Eleu,' a Parisian daucing girl who sacrificed the ecstatic gaiety and jubilant, abaudon of her life to nui>e and keep from the opium hal>it an English artist, and the ' House of Eulalie, 1 a study of the pious falsehood of two poor stricken souls, who, having built a hoube for their daughter just as *,he died, furnished a room there for her aud made believe that she had aotually lived in it, struck me as the most pathetic of the ' Errors.' Mr. Harlaud' s stories are almost as well worth reading for their finished style as for their fascinating subjects. A woman's gorgeous red hair— a colour to which he is rather partial— a romantic garden, an Italian evening above some sapphire bay, a dainty boudoir, a crooked staircasu alley, a moonlit night iv Italy — each and all are so picturesquely described that one almost feels the atmosphere. I cannot refraiu from quoting one or two of Mr. Harland's happy phrases : — ' A long narrow street, at the end of which the sky hung like a tapestry, splendid with the colours of the sky.' 'The sun had set an hour since, but tho western sky was btill splendid, like a dark banner, with sombre reds aud purples, and in the eatit hung the full moon, so brilliant, so opposite as to seem somehow almost like a piece of premeditated decoration.' ' Castle Ennui is the Bastille of moderu life. It ia built of prunes and prisms, it has its outer court of Convention, and its inner court of Propriety, it is moated round by Respeotability, and the shackles its inmates wear are forged of dull little duties and arbitrary little rules. ' You can ouly escape from it at the risk of breaking your sooial neck or remaining a fugitive from sooial justice to the end of your days.' The first volume of 'The Biographioal Edition' of Thackeray's works, published by Messrs. Smith, Elder, and Co., was issued last week. Tho novel selected to open th^ series was thut which most people consider Thackeray's best, 'Vanity Fair,' aud it in accompanied by the author's original illustrations and prefaced by a biographical introduction from the pen of the author'n daughter, Mrs. Richmond Ritchie, who has much to say that is interesting about her father's early years und about the oircumstances surrounding the composition of 'Vanity Fail-.' Strange to say, the public gave the novel at first but a very oold reoeption, the manuscript was declined by several publishers before its accept anoa by Messrs. Bradbury and Evana.

•The sale of " Vanity Fair 5 " (says Mra. Ritchie) was ho small that it was a question at that time whether its publication should not be* discontinued altogether. I have always been told that it was "Mrs. Perkins's Ball" which played the part of pilot or steam-tug to that, great line-of battle ship ' ' Vanity Fair, " and which brought it safely off the shoals. In later days I have heard my father speak of rhose times and say that besides " Mrs. Perkins's Ball," a review in the Edinburgh Review by Mr. A. Hayward greatly helped the bale of " Vanity Fair." ' Then the tide turned. In the summer of '47 Thackeray wrote to his mother— 'The book does everything but pay ' ; and in October — • It, does everything but bell, and appears really immensely to increase n?y reputation, if not my income.' By the summer of '48, when the serial publication, was drawing 1 to an end, ' Success was finally assured.' Mrs. Ritchie throws some further iiirht on the supposed originals of the characters in the story : This is what she says of Dobbin and Beoky : — ' The piotures of Dobbin iv his later life have certainly a great resemblance to one of my father's oldest friends and companions at college. This was Archdeacon Allen, a commander in an army where there are no Waterlooa, no decisive victories and treaties of peace, but where for men Buch as he was the arms are never laid away and the watches are never relaxed. < Anyone who knew the Archdeacon,' his son-in-law§ writes, 'and has studied " Vanity Fair, " will recognise his portrait, mutatis mutandis, in the simpleminded, chivalrous Major Dobbin. ' 1 may as well also state here that one morning a hansom drove up to the door, and out of it emerged a most charming, dazzling littlo lady, dressed in black, who greeted my father with great affection and brilliancy, and who, departing presently, gave him a large bunch of freßh violets. This was the only time I ever saw the fascinating little person who was by many supposed to be the original of Becky. My father only laughed when people asked him, but he never quite owned to it. He always said that he never consciously copied anybody. It was, of course, imposi siblo that suggestions should not come to him.' Mrs. Ritchie has also included in her introduction her father's long letter to the Duke of Devonshire, published soma months ago in Longman's Magazine, giving the subsequent career of some of the obief personages of ' Vanity Fair.* Mr. Robert Buchanan has written < The Reverend Annabel Lee' with a purpose, but will, I think, fail to convinoe most of his readers. He pictures society in the twenty-first century managed on the lines of humanity, when Christianity is regarded as a mediaeval doctrine, pernicious in its retardation of the world's progress, and long since discarded. Crippled and diseased children, old people tired of life or those incurably diseased, find everlasting rest in the Chamber of Euthanasia. The religion is that of Humanity. Those enrolled in the Book' of the Unfit are prohibited from marriage on pain of death. Exoept for accident, people live their allotted span of life happy aud contented, albeit the unalloyed joy of existenoe palls upon them. There is, however, still lett a small band of wretched sufferers, the relic of the old rfyime, who have a craving for some alleviation of their lot, for a happiness in a world to come— in which the Humanitarians do not believe — that has been denied them in this life. To these comes Annabel Lee, one of the finest specimens of the twenty-first century, preaching a revival of Christianity. Her avowal of love for a crippled musician, Uriel, leads to tbeir trial for infringing the law that condemns the Unfit to celibacy, in the course of which Uriel, after condemnation to death, is struok down in a struggle that ensues, and dies, the first martyr in the cause of Christianity. At this point the book stops, the impression left upon the reader's mind being that Mr. Buchanan has made out an excellent case for the doctrines of humanity, and that he himßelf realised as the book progressed that the attempt to reintroduce Christianity would be a failure. His picture of the society of Humanity is Utopian aud vague in the extreme.