BOOKS AND BOOK-MEN.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume IX, Issue 25, 18 June 1892, Page 618

BOOKS AND BOOK-MEN.

PEOPLE are beg : nning to wonder when Mr Robert Louis Stevenson is going to give the public another ‘ Treasure Island.’ That his hand has lost none of its cunning is very clearly shewn by the short stories which have occasionally reached the anxious publishers, but for the rest the hot climate appears to make Mr Stevenson lazy, and the fiction-reading public await vainly a long story from his pen. ‘The Bottle Imp’ now running through the Graphic shows that the master hand has lost none of its cunning, but it is only a brief sketch, more’s the pity. During the past week the daily press has given brief extracts from letters to the times which show that Mr Stevenson is taking an active interest in the politics of his tropical home. As an essayist, Mr Stevenson undoubtedly takes a very prominent position amongst writers of the present day. Perhaps he is hardly the most brilliant composer of treatises, but he is certainly very much in the van. Some of his admirers, indeed, claim for him the premier place as essayist; but the settlement of this question must be left to the unbiassed judgment of the next decade.

Even children are not forgetten by this versatile writer. They are enchanted with bis poetry in * A Child’s Garden of Verses.’ They feel he has also once been a child, as unlike many authors who try to cater for the very young, Mr Stevenson manages to convey the impression that he is still in touch with his juvenile readers. Here is one of the most taking pieces in this fascinating book : FROM A RAILWAY CARRIAGE, Faster than fairies, faster than witches, Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches; And charging along like troops in a battle, All through the meadows the horses and cattle; All of the sights of the hill and the plain Fly as thick as driving rain ; And ever again, in the wink of an eye, Painted stations whistle by, Here is a child who clambers and scrambles, All by- himself and gathering brambles ; Here is a tramp who stands and gazes ; And there is ihe green for stringing the daisies ! Here is a cart run away in the road Lumping along with man and load ; And here is a mill, and there is a river ; Each a glimpse and gone for ever.

Marion Crawford’s latest book, ‘The Three Fates,’ has arrived in the colony, and is now fairly distributed amongst antipodean booksellers. It is almost needless to say that the volume (Macmillan’s Colonial Library) is worth purchasing, and will delight lovers of the authors highly polished and characteristically clever style. Nobody expects anything from Mr Crawford but one of the ‘books of the season,’ and the publication of a novel from his pen is an event of considerable importance in the literary world. It is the fate of a man who has produced such works as ‘Mr Isaacs,’ ‘St. Ilario,’ etc., to have each succeeding production compared to these masterpieces. This is unfair but perfectly irresistible. Opinions will be divided as to whether ‘The Three Fates,’ is as good as either of the aforesaid novels. In our opinion it is not, but it is as much superior to the other men’s novels as the Fortnightly or Nineteenth Century is to the Hoys’ Own Paper or the Family Herald Supplement. Admirably conceived and finely worked out, ‘ The Three Fates ’ will add still further to the well-deserved lustre of Mr Crawford's fame as the favourite and infinitely the most worthy novelist of the last few years. Mr Hardy may be more classical in point of English, but Mr Crawford is eminently more pleasing.

The new novel is the story of a novelist, and of three women who play important parts in his life—who are, in fact, his three fates. As usual, the characters are all finely and firmly drawn with a consummate knowledge of human nature and human passions. George Wood, the hero, is a strange enough fellow, and though not so lovable a character as Nino, or Mr Isaacs, is yet destined to be the book

friend of many a kindred soul. There is little plot in the story. George is the son of a man who has been ruined in business by a dishonest partner. He has an instinctive hatred of money matters and business, and, to his father's distress, devotes himself to literature. His beginnings are small. He reviews novels at the rate of a few dollars a column, his instructions being never to give any novel over one hundred words. George is too good for this work, but would never have known it but for meeting bis First Fate, Constance Fearing, whom he falls in love with after the masterful fashion of Marion Crawford’s heroes. Constance is quite one of if not the best drawn character in the book. She is one of those unfortunate girls possessing an oversensitive conscience and a morbid habit of self analysis. She is in reality to some degree in love with George from the first, and when he proposes does not say him nay, but asks him to wait a year. During this time she meets him constantly, and inspires him to write his first novel. She gets it published. She does everything to make the man think that his love is returned, but just before the year is up she doubts in herself whether she really loves him enough to marry him. Her self examination (a species of amusement in which certain women delight) on the evening before George is to come for his answer after the year is admirably derciibed :—

‘ Constance Fearing was in great distress of mind. She had not forgotten the date, nor had she any intention of letting it pass without fulfilling her engagement and giving George the definite answer he had so patiently expected. The difficulty was, to know what that answer should be. Her indecision could not be ascribed to her indolence in studying tie question. It had been constantly before her, demanding immediate solution and tormenting her with its difficulties throughout many long months. Her conscientious love of truth had forced her to examine it much more closely than she would have chosen to do had she yielded to her inclinations. Her own happiness was no doubt vitally concerned, but the consideration of absolute loyalty and honesty must be first and before all things. The tremendous importance of the conclusion now daily more imminent appalled her and frightened her out of her simplicity into the mazes of a vicious logic ; and she found the labyrinth of her difficulties further complicated in that its ways were intersected by the by-paths of her religious meditations. When her reason began to grow clear, she suddenly found it opposed to some one of a set of infallible rules by which she had undertaken to guard her whole existence. To - day she prayed to heaven, and grace was given her to marry George. To-morrow she would examine her heart and ascertain that she could never love him as he deserved. Could she marry him when he was to give so much and she had so little to offer ? That would be manifestly wrong ; but in that case why had her prayer seemed to be answered so distinctly by an impulse from the heart ? She was evidently not in a state of grace, since she was inspired to do what was wrong. Selfishness must be at the bottom of it, and selfishness, as it was the sin about which she knew most, was the one within her comprehension which she the most sincerely abhorred. But if her impulse to marry George was selfish, was it not the direct utterance of her heart, and might not this be the only case in life in which she might frankly follow her own wishes ? George loved her most truly. If she felt that she wished to marry him, was it not because she loved him ? There was the point, again, confronting her just where she had begun the round of self-torture. Did she love him? What was the test of true love ? Would she die for him? Dying for people was theatrical and out of fashion, as she had often been told. It was much more noble to live for those one loved than to die for them. Could she live for George ? What did the words mean ? Had she not lived for him, said her heart, during the last year, if not longer? What nonsense, exclaimed her reason—as if giving a little encouragement and a great deal of advice could be called living for a man ! It meant more than that, it meant so much to her that she felt sure she could never accomplish it. Therefore she did not love him, and it must all come to an end at once.’ She finally gets her sister Grace to tell George that she doesn’t love him enough to marry him, and when he has gone after a painful interview, she throws herself down crying, ‘ Oh, now I know I ought to have married him ! I know I really love him !’ Certainly one feels inclined to lose temper with Constance on occasions.

Torn by fortune from the arms of Constance, George is rushed immediately into those of his Second Fate. ‘ Mamie Trimm,’ in the words of the novelist, ‘was one of those young girls of whom it is most difficult to give a true impression by describing them in the ordinary way. To say that her height was so many feet and so many inches—fewer inches than the average — that her hair was very fair, her eyes grey, her nose small, her mouth large, her complexion clear, her figure we’l proportioned, to say all this is to say nothing at all. A passport, in the days of passports, would have said as much, and the description would have just sufficed to point out Mamie Trimm if she had found herself in a company of tall women with black hair, large features and imposing presence. It would have been easier for a man to find her amongst a bevy of girls of her age, if he had been told that she possessed a charm of her own, which nobody could define. It would help him in his search to be informed that she looked very delicate, but was not so in reality, that her figure was not only well - proportioned, but was very exceptionally perfect and graceful, and that, but for her well set grey eyes and her transparent complexion, her face could never have been called pretty. All these points may have combined to produce the aforesaid individuality that was especially hers. Little is known, I believe, of that fair young girl of whom Charles Lamb wrote to Landor—“ Rose Aylmer has a charm that I cannot explain.” Mamie Trimm was George Wood’s Rose Aylmer.’ Mamie and Constance have a grand struggle for George, which culminates when endeavouring to save Grace’s (Constance’s sister) husband from drowning, how renewed misunderstandings arise, how and why George is forced into proposing to Mamie by a designing mother, and how the whole thing ends, and who the Third Fate is we do not intend to tell. Not the least interesting parts of the book are those describing how novels are written. Aucklanders may feel interested in the fact that the work can be obtained at Wildman’s.