BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

Evening Star, Issue 11893, 22 May 1903, Page 2

BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

' Lady Rose's Daughter.* By Mrs Humphry Ward. London: Macmillan and Co. Dunedin: J. Braithwaite. There is a family likeness about Mrs Ward's books. Each is characterised by an easy mastery of the subject treated, a graceful style, a high ideal of individual conduct, and a decided similarity of incident. Alike in 'Robert Elsmere,' 'Marcella.' 'Helbeck of Bannisdale,' and 'Lady Rose's Daughter,' the heroine commits herself, to a greater or less extent, with some man other than the one she ultimately loves or marries, and in each the lady is called upon to " explain " episodes it is better, perhaps, that the real lover or husband should know, but in which the latter has had small it any part. The present volume, we think, is an advance upon, say, ' Meanor.' There are incident, movement, dramatic climaxes, and few or/none of those lons retrospective summaries with which Airs Ward's readers are familiar. In brief, it is a novel whose ♦primary purpose would appear to be to tell a story, the result being that the book, when once commenced, is not parted with willingly. The philosophy is never beyond one's depth, and the many insights into character seem to express in concise terms exactly what the reader would like to be able to say about the people to whom he or ' she is introduced. Epigram we have, but no bitterness nor straining after effect. The " smart" things arc tot written merely because thev are smart. They grow out of the situation, and are always possible—which is what most of this tort of thine is not:

" Oh, well, you see, you can't make the world into a moral He. to please you," said the Duchess, absently. "Everybody wants money nowadays. And the soldiers are just as bad as anybody else. They dont look money—as the City men do; that's why we women fall in love with them—but they think it all the same." "He could give you a -ji-eat position. Don't despise it. We English big-wigs h*ve a good time." "The outward sicrns of life's most poignant and most beautiful moments are generally very simple and austere." The majority of the people we meet are in high society. Dukes, Lords, Ministers, and diplomats cluster thickly, but we feel that we are mixing with ordinary men and women. Though ceitain of their own social status, they act as we like to think cultured and refined people do act, and as such they are somehow very different to the nobility of the stage and the " shocker." Tho moral standard may not be very high. Even Mrs Ward makes hex Lady Henry sav:

"Insulted because heT mother broke the Seventh Commandment? Oh, dear, no! TTiat, in my opinion, doesn't touch people much nowadays. Insulted because tney had been kept in the dark—that's all. Vanity I rot morals!" Hut for all this they are, from anything we know to the contrary, clean-living people, and the atmosphere of intrigue barely makes its existence felt. As fc* lindy Rose's daughter l —the heroine of the work—her presence and personality take possession of the reader as they fascinated and dominated her immediate contemporaries. The illegitimate child o! Lady Rose and a well-born artist-cum-Socialist-cum-poet, trained in a French convent, and practically ignorant of society until Lady Henry takes her as companion when she is twenty-six yean old, she has, in three years, established a reputation as the most attractive and brilliant entertainer of the day. To Lady Henry's house flock the great ones of the world, but it is not to see the stern, envious, bitter tongued, clever old lady, but to talk and bask in the smiles of Julie Le Breton, the paid companion and the-who-on-earth-is-she goddess. The character is admirably and faithfully drawn. Intellectually gifted, yet brimful of passion, determined to make herself a recognised position, yet refusing the heir to a splendid dukedom for the sake of a poor soldier of doubtful antecedents, and whom she knows will not marry her, not above telling fibs, yet true as steel, moral yet unmoral, beautiful yet not beautiful, thin >lmost to the point of emaciation, yet queen wherever she enters, whether it be ball room or country inn. Mra Ward *in place says: " The obscure tumult within her represented in fact a collision between the pagan and Christian conceptions of Hfe. In self-dependence, in personal pride, in her desire to refer all things to the arbitrament oi reason, Julie, whatever practice, was theoretically a Stoic and a pagan." And she makes Julie cry: * l am not what you call ,1 good woman—you know it too well! I don't measure things by your standards. lam capable of such a journey aa you found me on. I can't find in my own mind that I repent it at all. I cau tell a lie! You can't! I can have the meanest and most sordid thoughts. You can't! Lady Henry thought me an intriguer. I am one. It is in my blood. And I don't know whether in the end I could understand your language and your life. If I don't, I shall make you miserable."

This, is said to the man she had married, and to whom she was indebted for saving her from what most people would term "personal dishonor," but coming from her we recognise its harmony with all that has been done and said. Around Julie are grouped a charming, good-hearted chatterer of a Duchess, who worships "the companion" as a superior being; Sir Wilfrid Bury, a courteous, wise .diplomat of the old school; Lord Lackington, cultured, witty, boyish, and only seventy-five years old; and, next in importance to Julie herself, Jacob Delafield, a young man of peculiar temperament and great expectations. His type is not unfamiliar in literature, and it has not so far made itself popular. Honorable, exacting, impatient of others' failings, and yet keen to avoid the role of judge, it is apparent that a nature such as Julie's would be up in arms against him. It is the clashing of two opposing yet equally powerful forces and one must yield to avoid that misery which would result from the intimacy involved in marriage. Fortunately, Julie is prepared to be tamed into submission. She hates Delafield granting and anticipating her every wish. He should and must compel her to love him, and she will yield. The advent of another precipitates matters. Warkworth is a handsome, dashing, ordinary type of soldier, who by a series of lucky chances and a certain inherent ability has made a reputation. His morals are a negative factor, his conduct none too reputable, and his ideals money and position. Without family or high character, he despises the relatives from whom he borrows money to pay his debts. Warkworth, however, effects what a host of honorable, cultured, well-born, wealthy men could not do. The proud, the all-conquering Julie is ready to—and nearly did—give up all for him. Still Warkworth is only too human. His faults and vices are those of his own and every age. Nor is he without virtues. He has courage and faith in himself, and he is a cold-blooded libertine. His letter to Julie—one of the best things in the book—shows that, and there is a loyalty—falsely true, perhaps— not altogether destitute of admiration in the last lonely and painful hours of his life. The mental contrast between the lovers is sufficiently marked, but not unnaturally so. The history of the race is full to repletion with this unity of like yet unlike. Of the moral of the book it is difficult to speak. Is it that disbelief in or carelessness of God, a future life, the sacrament of marriage are of small account provided one is born in the riglfb class? That intellect and reason, coupled with personal charm, shall •win in this world? We know that legitimacy, as such", cuts but a poor figure in the highest cijcles, but is it a good doctrine to emphasise-? Of course, probably there is np moral at all. The story may be only a story, in spite'of the veil that barely hides the identity of living persons. But we cannot help drawing inferences. It would be uncomplimentary to the author not to do so. And why we now ask What is the moral? is that Mrs Ward has dedicated 'Lady Rose's Daughter' "to my children."

Mr Bertram Dobell, in his recently-pub-lished 'Sidelights on Charles Lamb,' has i reference to Hazlitt, who was the antithesis of the gentle Elia, and HazItt's txtraordinary and uncalled-for Ifctack «n. the ithnrvr*-"- e£ Sir

Walter Scott in a criticism of 'Pevetil of the Peak' Hazlitt, as is well known, was of a moody and vindictive disposition, and, fanoying that Scott' was the author of or had incited attacks upon him in 'Blackwood's/ set upon the author of Waverley in this wise: "The reputed author is accused of being a thorough-paced partisan in his own person—intolerant, mercenary, mean; a professed toadeater, a sturdy hack, a pitiful retailer or suborner of infamous slanders, a literary Jack Ketch, who would greedily sacrifice anyone of another way of thinking as a victim to prejudice and power, and yet would do it by other hands rather than appear in it himself." " Knowing what we know now of Sir Walter Scott," says Mr Dobell, "it seems almost incredible that Hazlitt could have so misapprehended bis character." The review was handed in late, it was not properly edited, and several copies of the magazine had been printed and distributed ere the indiscretion was discovered. The article created great indignation among 'Blackwood's' "lions," and a scathing reply was the result. Hazlitt wrote no longer for the 'London.'

M. Legouve, dying at the age of 96, was' probably the oldest man of letters in Europe. The successor to the position of doyen of the literary calling now falls to Dr Samuel Smiles, who is 90, closely followed by Dr Nicolas Beets, the Dutcl* theologian and novelist,' who is 88, and by Sir Theodore Martin, who is 86. The age of 85 has been attained by Sir Joseph Hooker, Mr G. J. Holyoake, and Dr Theodor Mommsen. M. Vapereau, onco editor of the French ' Men of the Time,' Dean Hole, and Professor Montague Burrows are 83; Mr Herbert Spencer and Sir W. H. Russell are 82; while the age of 80 has been reached by Professor David Masson and Mr Alfred Russel Wallace. Mr Chas. Godfrey Leknd and Professor Furnivall (78), "Rolf Boldrewood" (76), M. Jules Verne, Mr George Meredith, and Mr John HoUuigshead (75), and Count Tolstoy, Dr Ibsen, and Mr James Gairdner (74), seem the merest lads in comparison with these literary veterans.

Mr H. H. Bonnell, in his recent work published by Longmans on Charlotte Bronte, June Austen, and George Eliot, divides the strength that bas kept the first writer's power alive into three parts—her realism, her attitude towards Nature, her passion. Of all three he has many fine and subtle things to say. pointing out how the woman's truth, purity, and high purpose dominated all she saw, felt, and depictedfl and in closing he sums up thus: " There are many greater novelists ; there are some greater women -novelists. But even because of this Charlotte Bronte's place Is all the more secure as the greatest writer of pure passion in the English tongue. And it may be that this has more undying fame hi it than to be the greatest writer of fiction. Certain it is that we shall never have anything like the Brontes again until like genius mates with like loveliness and like innocence." With equal skill and insight he divides George Eliot's power into a trinity of parts, dealing with her religion and* philosophy, her art, hef sympathy, and showing that* while Bhe lacked in nothing—cither intellectual ?rasp, passion, humor, or sympathy—her old upon the. hearts of her readers was often loosened through the very breadth and range of her erudition. Her sympathy with humanity was sometimes so deep and far-reaching as to befog those who could not attain her mental vision. Hays Mr Bonnell : " Charlotte Bronte was a voice crying in the wilderness^—crying for pain, crying unrestrained. It was tlfe first note of pure personality—pure in every sense—heard in our literature ; and it was the more startling because it was a woman's voice. George Eliot felt this passionate emotion in a larger way. The sympathetic tendencies of her thought were gradually developed until the personality of emotion was absorbed into a generalised sympathy, and the passion passed into compassion." She thus became the first (if not in time, at least in power) of altruists in fiction—the first to give the fullest expression to that throbbing so:ise of the painful pressure of universal life upon the individual conscience which is now felt by all upon whom her message has fallen."" Mr Bonnell's estimate of Jane Austen carries the reader to more even ground and into a more serene atmosphere.