| | | | Large subjects need bold handling. An oratorio twanged on a | Jew’s harp would be anything but sublime, and the call to | arms whistled through a penny-trumpet would not awaken | ardour even in the heart of the most martial. Writers who | seek to strike the chords of the deeper passions of humanity | would strike them with a firm hand and a powerful grasp if | they wish to evoke a lofty or a stirring melody. To touch | them timidly with the fingers tips is to fail in producing any | kind of harmony, such a touch being too feeble and infirm for | strings so massive and a melody so large. When timidly | swept over, as in this manner, the result is something like that | which old romancers symbolized, when they told how | fainéant knights and craven squires strove to wind a blast | through some enchanted horn which could be sounded only | by the fearless and the strong. This is the condition in which | | the authoress of Hester’s Sacrifice has placed | herself. She has taken for her theme the tragic passions of | remorse and revenge, but she has been afraid of her own | subject, and has consequently sounding such a piping, weak, | and frightened little note that | no-one can hear in it the echo of | either tragedy or passion. She has built the sacrificial fire | through which to pass her suffering souls out of drawing-room | pastilles, perfumed and leaving no stain of soot or soil | of ash behind, but with not strength of flame enough to singe | a passing butterfly.

"Coarse,"

the dreaded epithet | so often flung by weakness at vigour, can never be applied to | her. She is never coarse, but then she is never strong. Always | pretty, pure, and graceful, always with a stainless little thread | of high morality running through the work ~~ but a thread | only, not a backbone ~~ she is also always weak, diffuse, | and timid. She spins out into the orthodox three volumes | materials which would have been beaten thin in one; and | Hester’s Sacrifice, stripped of its wordy silliness, | and of half a dozen characters that have just as much to do | with the action of the novel as so many cardboard puppets, | would be nothing more than an ordinary magazine story, the | residuum of plot being of the slenderest kind. Nothing can | exceed the tiresomeness of the minor characters. The | maunderings of Mr. Bilson, the attendant of the St. | Angusbury School of Art; the gabble of Miss Lapiter, the | good little flaxen-wigged missionary collector; the stupid | episode of Sally and Tom; and the ungrammatical | Christianity of Margaret the cook ~~ all extending as they do | through pages upon pages at a time, are so many | excrescences on the work, which would lose three parts of its | bulk, but not an ounce of story or of interest, if they were all | cut out bodily with the scissors, and the broken paragraphs | left to adjust themselves as they best could. It is this kind of | pointless maundering about uninteresting people which spoils | so many novels written by women. They have their tale of | bricks to make ~~ with very little straw in most instances, | poor creatures. They must fill those inexorable nine hundred | pates; and, being unable to fill them with vivid scenes or | powerful incidents, they deluge them with a weak solution of | piety or comicality, according to the nature of the author. | But, whether of the pious school or of the funny, the result is | equally exasperating, and the flux of brainless, purposeless | talk equally annoying and impeding. | The story turns upon the rather inexplicable remorse of the | hero of the book, one Nils Brayton, for having broken off a | rash engagement with a tropical beauty somewhere out in the | West Indies; and on the still more inexplicable revenge of the | same tropical beauty, Ginevra Fossanette by name, for what | seems to have been a very ordinary case of timely rueing. | You are to suppose nothing more binding between the two | than a little fervid love-making, and an engagement | following as the natural consequence. If the authoress | intended to shadow forth a deeper mystery, she has concealed | it so well, and sounded her string of passionate wrong so | weakly, that the reader sees and hears nothing; which makes | the silent, steady, inflexible spirit of hate and revenge in | Ginevra more and more bewildering, because so exaggerated | in proportion to the offence, while it takes Nils Brayton’s | remorse out of the region of heroic self-chastisement, and | sinks it into that of morbid moral weakness which, besides | being weak, is untrue to nature as well. For a man so brave | and heroic as Nils Brayton is sought to be depicted is manly | even in his sins and in his repentance. And if he is made | feeble and morbid towards his past, with its small peccadillos | as in this instance, or even absolute faults and crimes as in | some others that might be named, neither square jaws nor | stiff backbone will redeem him; he will be nothing better | than a clothes’-horse, six foot high and broad in proportion, | but with the heart of a hare and the conscience of an | hysterical woman, and without one of the moral attributes | which go to make up a true man. This delineation of her | hero’s repentance is the crucial test of a woman’s skill in | depicting a man’s character. She can draw him carefully and | accurately enough from the outside, and make a very | good-looking clothes’-horse indeed; but when she begins to | animate her dry bones, she falls the upon the real difficulties | of character-painting, and finds how hard it is to evolve out | of her internal consciousness what can only be known by | actual experience, and what half the world knows by actual | experience, to the confusion of the fancy portrait-painter. | Whether she recognizes these difficulties or not, she too often | makes the shipwreck on them, and ends by reducing the | good-looking dry bones to a mass of invertebrate pulp, which | no man, even the weakest, will acknowledge to be the true | form of himself or his brother. The author of John | Halifax, Gentleman,"

set the fashion of these | man-formed mollusks in her Life for a Life: and Nils | Brayton is, we are sorry to say, a weak transcript of that | singularly weak original. What, too, can be funnier in its | childishness than the catastrophe? Ginevra Fossanette, so | long disguised as Hester’s uncomfortable housemaid Jane | Fawcet, dressing herself

"in the things"

brought | from England ~~ a lustrous black gown and a scarlet shawl | ~~ stealthily setting fire to the ship, which seems to have | burnt as if it had been made of writing-paper; having a row | with Nils the faithless, then springing overboard, leaving the | ship and its cargo to perish for the mere chance of destroying | Hester, and not waiting to see the end, as undoubtedly such a | person would have done ~~ can anything be weaker or more | unnatural? It is sensation expurgated ~~ sensation tamed and | cooled and pared to suit English middle-class respectability | ~~ crime written delicately on tinted paper ~~ and the tragic | ode warbled out by means of musical glasses. And do dress | and hair alone make such a difference with a woman that one | you have known and loved can come and go, unquestioned | and undiscovered, if only she wears a mob-cap and tucks up | her ringlets, but when she lets down her back hair, puts on a | well-fitting black dress and a scarlet shawl, stands revealed at | once? If disguise were no more difficult than this, many an | odd trick would be played in the world, to the confusion of | persons and the bewildering of identities. Ginevra Fossanette | does only this. As Jane Fawcet, she wears a print gown and a | close cap tied under her chin, and Nils Brayton, who sees her | constantly, has not even a vague half-conscious kind of | doubtful recognition of her. Voice, eyes, mouth, gesture, | accent ~~ all the small individualism quite beyond the | control of even the most finished actor to conceal ~~ tell him | nothing. Only eleven years have elapsed since he and | Ginevra Fossanette flirted under the palm trees of that | nameless West Indian island, or sat in the moonlight as | betrothed lovers; but no trace of likeness to her former self, | in Jane Fawcet, awakens the most confused remembrance | with Nils; and the last fatal recognition on board the during | ship is due solely to the well-fitting black gown, the scarlet | shawl, and the back hair falling over her shoulders. This is | neither art nor nature, neither creation nor delineation; it is | simply fancy sketching, not rising to the dignity of | imagination, nor having the accuracy of portrait-painting. | The deep things of spiritual life, the stately silence of sorrow, | the tragic breath of crime, the terrible diapason of passion, | even the saintly sublimity of quiet heroism, are themes too | large and lofty for such dainty handling as the authoress of | Hester’s Sacrifice alone ventures on. She is too | tame and too timid to depict anything beyond the ordinary | routine of English home life, and she would be wise to | reserve her powers for what she can do without strain or | effort, and to leave to titans the task of building towers | whereby the scan the heavens. Pretty pastorals among the | sheep and daisies are more in her way, and more nearly to the | height of her ability; but a strong man’s remorse and a | passionate woman’s revenge are beyond and above her | artistic powers. Then, this very revenge is badly managed. | Steadily nourished, yet never worked for, and brought about | at last by a fortuitous concourse of circumstances, it is | painted in a languid, halting, and unsatisfactory manner | altogether. Of all things the broad sweep of passion demands | the boldest, if also the most careful, treatment. Meagreness of | outline, dread of detail, fear of the subject, or prettiness in the | place of power are equally fatal to success. Such a crime as | that of Ginevra Fossanette’s, and such a nature as hers, could | only be rendered tolerable by the boldness with which the | keynote was sounded, and the skill with which the harmony | of the after-phrase was sustained. Depicted as they are, they | are no more fittingly dealt with than would be an AEschylean | drama modernized by Tupper. | Doubtless there is some final cause for these rose-water | novels. As there are people who buy raspberry-rock and | cocoanut paste, and who find the diet exhilarating, so are | there people who read such books as Hester’s Sacrifice, | and who rest and are thankful after the process. Meat | for men and milk for babes truly. Milk and water rather, and | more of the latter than of the former, in such literary food as | is here offered; but it is to be supposed that certain digestions | need such simple fare, and that

"sensation,"

| according to Ginevra Fossanette, represents the intellectual | cravings of a large class of English boys and girls. At all | events they will not get intoxicated with the strong waters of | Hester’s Sacrifice; and fathers and mothers may | write

"admitted"

against the title without the | smallest fear of danger resulting. And this is something. A | great many good girls and modest youths are all the better for | a few carefully guarded glimpses behind the scenes of human | life. They would be all the worse if these glimpses were open | revelations, and if they were taken through the outer courts | into the penetralia without gradual initiation. Sensation | novels are unhealthy enough; and though we have spoken of | Hester’s Sacrifice as being weak and inartistic, | yet it will do no harm, and it is that inestimable treasure to | British mothers, safe family reading ~~ which of itself is | praise, if not of the highest artistic kind, yet of a satisfactory | moral kind more perhaps to the purpose.