Literary Notes

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1163, 15 June 1894, Page 12

Literary Notes

" I would rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of books than a king who did not lore i«ading."—Lord Macau lay L

Publishers and booksellers ore invHed to send books an,', publications of general interest for notice in this column, thereby enabling country renders to bo in touch with the latest works in the Colony. Address all communications for this column to th« " Literary Editor New Zealand Mail.

LONDON LITERARY GOSSIP.

From Our Own Correspondent. London, April 20. The position Mrs Humphry Ward has made for herself may be gathered from the fact that on the morning of the publication of "Marcella," the daily papers contained over fourteen columns of reviews. The Times, Chronicle, and Daily News each gave two columns to the book, and the Telegraph one column. The Scotsman, Liverpool Pest and Manchester Guardian also had long notices, the latter's extending to three columns. The success of the Chronicle's literary page is causing the other dailies (both morning and evening) to devoto more and more space to book reviews and gossip. Unless, indeed, the weekly reviews wake up they will bo smothered by the dailies. The instance of U Marcella u shows up tbe lack of enterpriEe of the former painfully conspicuously. The Saturday Review of the 7th was alone up-to-date, neither Spectator, Speaker, National Observer, Academy, nor Athenoeum containing a line concerning Mrs Ward's work. . • • • Mudie took a very large number of the first edition of " Marcella." The book was delivered at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, and by 2 there was not a copy in the library*

On Thursday evening last Mr W. E. Henley presided over the wake dinner of the National Observer, which was attended by all the old staff in London. It proved a melancholy function and much of sorrow had to be drowned in the flowing bowl. I fancy it must have been between 2 and 3 a.m. when one of Mr Henley's young lions romarked on the propriety of a journal which had been strangled by excess being waked with excess. Strange to say the remark was not well received. I hear Mr Charles "Whibley made the speech of the evening, and Mr George Curzon, M.P., proposed " Absent Frionds," viz., Barrio, Kipling and Marriott-Wat-son.

Miss Mary Angela Dickens, whoso charming' story " A Mere Cypher " I have more than once commended to you, will this week issue a new three-volume novel entitled " A Valiant Ignorance." Messrs MacMillan, the publishers, have also Mrs Steele's volume of Anglo-Indian tales entitled " The Flower of Forgiveness" in hand.

The sorry misadventures of Mr George Moore's kitchenmaid yclept " Esther Waters," appears to have aroused extraordinary emthufiasm in some quarters. Mr Quiller Couch (Q),of the Speaker, pronounces the story " the rnoet artistic, the most complete and the most inevitable work of fiction that has been written in England for at least two years. To find a book to compare with ' Esther Waters ' we must go back to Decembor, 1891, and to Mr Hardy's ' Tess of the D'Urbervilles.'" Mr Henry Norman terms it " a piece of patient, solid, vigorous work which stamps him a master of his craft." And the Globe says, " Hardly since Defoe have tha habits and manners of the masses been delineated as they are here with a particularity which at once convinces us of the writer's truthfulness and accuracy."

The new novel by .Mary A. Hoppus (Mrs Masters) is called " Thorough," and will be published immediately. Unlike her recent stories this is not an historical romance.

The world, or rather that portion of it which is pleased to call itself Society, has waited anxiously for the successor to " Dodo." The critics have also waited patiently for Mr Benson to prove himself in the literary arena. Last week Messrs Methuen published two thin volumes from Mr Benson's pen entitled " The Rubicon." Having read this wo may fairly take the new author's literary measure. On the strength of "Dodo" alone Mr Benson would have been given a suit of fame much too big. " The Rubicon " proves him not so clever as we thought.

It was but natural that in his second essay in fiction he should follow the manner of his audacious and most successful " Dodo." He has done so rather too closely. The interest of the new work centres in the married life of his heroine, . who has all "Dodo's " faults (and many entirely her own) but lacks the wit of that amusing individuality. Eva Grampound is a selfish, unfeeling beauty with the mental habit of a harlot. She marries Lord Hayes (a middle-aged man without a particle of virility) on the advice of her mother, and for the sake of the wealth and station he could give her. She proceeds forthwith to treat him with insulting indifference. She knew why he had married her and tells him so. " You wished to be master of my beauty ; there is not another woman in London who can touch me. You wanted someone to give that stamp to your dinner parties that I give it." Plainly put the bargain between the pair was, " You give me the luxuries and position. I give you my body and beauty." Lord Hayes fulfils his part of this bargain, but Lady Eva systematically neglects hers. She proves on very short acquaintance to be a singularly ill-bred young lady whose sentiments would disgrace a chambermaid. The ill-matched pair go to the Riviera for the honeymoon and we learn that the sense of her husband's possession of her " made itsslf felt in an insult and an outrage. . . . The conciousness that she was his was like an open wound. She had sacrificed all her undeveloped possibilities to a loveless owner; all she had was no longer hers." From the Riviera the honeymoon couple run to Monte Carlo, where the lady gambles with abandoned recklessness, because, as Mr Benson profoundly put its, " She liked the sensation of measuring herself with infinite and immeasurable forces, as exhibited in the laws of gravity and momentum." When she wins she bursts into loud laughter. Mr Benson says she " couldn't help it," and one can quite believe him. From Monte Carlo to Montone, from Mentone to Algiers is the route of the honeymoon. At tho former place my lady sets her cap at a very commomplace person, Jem Armine, a friend of her husband's. She invites him to join them (without, of course, consulting her lawful partner) in the trip to Algiers. He doesn't accept and they go alone. She is a good sailor, my lord isn't, so the well-bred creature mocks him in his misery. Then she looks to the West while " her eyes were filled with a still questioning wonder. She had arrived at that most agonizing stage of feeling, sure that a mystery was there, without grasping what it was to which she wanted any answer. Not to put too fino a point on'this queer physical cum-mental frame of mind she was, it would seem, wanting badly to act contrary to her i marriage vows. Eva found Algeria just as monotonous as the BiYierai Lord

Hayes must have enjoyed his honeymoon immensely in the charming company of this very modern woman. In Lone on Lady Hayes continues her flirtations and manages to keep her husband in his proper place. His mother sho contrives to include in her daily shower of vulgar insults, and finally by adding a little mild blasphemy she drives tho old gentlewoman ] from the house. Lord Ha} es only mildly demurs at her extravagance and does not, up to a certain point, seem to mind hor lovers. Mr Benson, indeed, makes this English gentleman out to bo a despicablo cur who rather sniggers to himself at the fact of Jem Arminb being in love with his wife. He takes it to be a testimonial to his own admirable taste in choosing her for hii partner. After a space ray lord asserts himself in a feeble fashion. In the language of the vulgar the " Armine biz. gets a trifle too thick" and Lord Hayes " bucks." It doesn't matter mir-h since my lady has tired of Jim. She has found Reggie Davenport. He is " new, I fresh and young." Reggie is likewise unsophisticated and engaged to be married, so Eva goes through the process of falling in love with him. Lord Hayes doesn't mind it at all. The only thing he would object to, he says, would be " any scandal on the subject." Then he devolops heart disease, and tells his wife he may die at any moment. Lady Eva pities him, but she has "no sympathy with disease " it seems to her " hardly decent," and she continues her flirtations. Finally Mrs Benson's heroine dies of prussic acid in a most commonplace Family Herald fashion. The book as a whole is an absolute failure. It may have a circulating library success, but it is emphatically a sensual, earthly and unwholesome story. Its literary merits are not worth mention, and as a picture of the morals, manners and customs of the Upper Ten of to-day it is sublimely ridiculous.