ROSA NOUCHETTE CAREY.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 601, 1 September 1909, Page 3

ROSA NOUCHETTE CAREY.

l' The. English mail brings news of the death lof one irlio' been.'a sweet and gentle friend to English girlhood, MissRosa Nouclietto Carey,, tho writer of ,inany a readable and- wholesome,—if. sentimental" and .noye).... .It.-has become , tho fashion nowadays, when novels must deal .realistically •ititfc'lives of lurid or'.dingy dolour,.to sneer at Miss' Carey's pictures of do: mcatio life, but it.must.be confessed that as the gravo "Atheneuni" onco said "that Miss Carey's men and,women are extraordinarily like the people one meets at garden parties." That pretty well summed; up the style of her books. Her people were always .well-behaved, well-bred, and nearly always conventional. There wa3 a sameness about most of her books. One could';tako up almost any ono and feel sure that the heroine would have "a small brown face, which relied for charm, on its expression rather than on the regularity ;of its features" ; that"the hero would, at an earlier, stage in his career, have loved,madly, passionately, a'daughter of -t-lje gods, tail, golden-haired a'|id glorious; that he would have only the ashes of a great passion to offer the brown-eyed heroine, but that he ■would placo those-ashes for lier acceptance in the most costly casket ; that she would receive him with* a great and tender joy, and that their after lives would be spent in affluence, in a beautiful home, and a gentle evening light.' Sometimes, after, reading such a novel through to the very end, one felt tint Miss Carey was rather rough on the gentle littlo heroine, and one wished .that she could have met the magnificent hero before hp fell beneath'tho spell of his gorgeously beautiful first love.. It would have been pleasing, 1 to think that the mousey-quiet lit'tlo wom.->n who satisfied-'his mature manhood might have had the benefit'of his'youthful , joy and 'enthusiasm, that she might have been offered' soniething more than the cinder of a heart.

But in this respect Miss Carey was' Very firm,' aiid probably right to the.end, sho'-nado her hcroiue bo thankful for the lesser - mercy. Several times she broko- loose from her theme of the conventional family lifoj and it was then that she was most interesting. Even those who .sneered at "Nellie's Memories," and. in mockery'' of. that book's cloying' sweetness' persisted in calling 'it ■"Jelly's Memories," had to confess that in "Not Like Other Girls,"-and in "Merle's Crusade" Miss Carey had produced two very charming little tales. In these days, perhaps, one hardly can consider-them revolutionary, but, when, they were.-published,-it hiust.have seemed to their readers that the gentlewomen who set. up in business as practical dressmakers for. a' small. village, and the other girl who (because sho could .not spell well enough to becomo even a.nursery governess) engaged herself instead \ as a children's nurse, were'very uncommon revolutionary young women, indeed. Perhaps the books had some effect in .making girls think sensibly on these'matters. For many years the-"Girls' Own Paper." published Miss Carey's stories as-serials," but a great many of, them—there are very many —were, published, first jn book form, and thoy have always bad, a steady., sale, though it. is.probable,that the, age, of their, readers, decreases; every year' until, • if; Miss-Carey had lived a very few. years longer, she might liavo, been, confined ( entirely .to a, nursery literary circle. The girls.who, fifteen- years ago, read, Rosa'' Notichotte Carey,,, to-day would scorn 'anything milder than -Marie Corelli. ■''■•"'.