'A. / / /! pp THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS I ) LIBRARY ES. From the collection of Julius Doerner, Chicago Purchased, 1918. 809.3 ^ / /n ■ ^ /, ^ l 2 l/ ^ ..i4 The Superior, /? /-•- /t. ! The Professor, L161 — H41 DISS^IBUSIOR OB PRIZES. ST. MICHAEL’S COLLEGE. TOBONTO, June, .i8g A ■x (pTZZC S 1 C , f ^ , 4 ^ M A. / ./ 7 obtained by M - / of_ I ’. 7 - The Superior, The Professor, 4 — 5 L 161 — H41 # • / MODERN NOVELS AND NOVELISTS & i?ooE of Criticisms MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN, A.M NEW YORK WILLIAM H. SADLIER ii Barclay Street Copyrighted, t888 Ey william h. sadlier The author begs leave to acknowledge his obligation to the editor of The Catholic World for permission to Use much of the material in this volume. fo Immor- tality, Duty — she pronounced, with terrible earnestness, how in- conceivable was the first, how unbelievable the second, and yet how peremptory and absolute the third. Never, perhaps, have sterner accents affirmed the sovereignty of impersonal and unrecompensing law.’ “ Or, in our own words, there was, according to her creed, no supreme Creator, demanding right conduct from his creatures, and himself furnishing the instinctive sense to determine what right con- duct is ; no life beyond this, to supplement our existence here, to * F. W. H. Meyers, in the Century Magazine, November, 1881. 40 MODERN NO EELS AND NOVELISTS atone for its suffering and to recompense its steadfast adherence to duty ; no comprehension of duty, except as a generous impulse we may chance to feel to extend aid and comfort to fellow-creatures as hopeless as ourselves — creatures who have no home in any other world, and, like the butterflies, are fashioned but for a day, and that ,a day, not of warmth and bloom and fragrance, but oftenerof search- ing blasts, sullen skies, and frozen fields.” Of the heroines of George Eliot, Mrs. Woolson truly says: “ They do not die; they do not plunge wildly into sin, suffer stout martyrdom, or surrender proudly to fate. They simply live and live on. What was a leaping flame becomes a lingering smudge. There are no graves for us to weep over, no consoling visions of a translation to the stars.” Dorothea, admirably depicted by the touch of genius, fails miserably ; Romola floats away into self-sacrifice that seems to hold no compensation for her; Maggie, in the Mill on the Floss , owing to a crooked view of morality, suffers horribly; Gwendolen becomes a wreck; Savona- rola, a shadow in her hands, fails miserably; Tito, the most masterly of her characters, falls little by little; Grandcourt, Lydgate — all pass before us disconsolate, unsatisfied, unconsoled. Mrs. Woolson’ s critique is thoroughly comprehensive and very sound in both an ethical and literary sense. It i a distinction, and a valuable one for her, that she has not let herself be carried away from her honest conclu- sions regarding George Eliot and her works by the un- critical estimate which a great part of those who form public opinion have made of the works of a woman of genius who deserves a place as a novelist beside Mrs. Gas- kell and Miss Austen rather than near Thackeray or Balzac, and as a philosopher to be ranked among those that tried to pull down while the Light that enlighteneth the world shone full upon them. Fortunately, genera- MODERN NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 4i tions to come will “ skip ” her theories, as they have for- gotten the purpose of Gulliver , and read her novels for the stories which, once read, can never be recalled with- out admiration and wonder at such potency and vividness of imagination and expression. Ludlow: “ The Captain of the Janizaries.” The historical novel is coming into vogue again, and the Rev. James Ludlow is in the fashion in giving the public The Captain of the Janizaries: A Tale of the Fall of Constantinople (New York: Dodd & Mead). Mr. Lud- low chooses as his hero George Castriot, better known in history as Scanderbeg. Mgr. Seton, in Roman Essays , gives an exhaustive account of this Albanian prince, who helped to save Europe from Moslem encroachments at a critical time. Mr. Ludlow has a fine opportunity ; he has selected his epoch with discernment, for Sir Walter Scott could not have seized a more stirring time or a more pic- turesque figure. George Castriot was forced to embrace Mohammedanism when young, having been given to the sultan as a hostage. He became the first military man in the dominions of Amurath, but gave up all his honors to fight for the cross against the crescent, which threat- ened soon to hang over Christian Europe as a full moon. He turned back the tide, and he might have led a new crusade and recovered Constantinople had monarchs list- ened to the voice of the pope. Mr. Ludlow’s romance starts out well, but he fails to interest us in Scanderbeg or the Christians. We are shown that the Christians, es- pecially the Latins, were little better than the Moslems. He paints Cardinal Julian as an ecclesiastical fop, and asserts that he gave the Christians, when making a breach of faith, “ absolution ” for what they were about to do. The life of the Janizaries is well described. There are 42 MODERN NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. chapters in which the action of the story is rapid and its scenes graphic. But t^iese good qualities cannot atone for the uncertain grasp the author seems to have on the great religious crisis which Scanderbeg so well under- stood, and which made the battle of Lepanto a glorious episode, not only in the annals of the world, but in those of the church. It is curious that non-Catholic writers t seem usually to sympathize with any form of revolt against the church, and to give the impression that Christianity did not exist before Luther made the protest he after- wards remorsefully regretted “Life of a Prig.” The Life of a Trig, by One , reprinted by Henry Holt & Co. (New York) from the second English edition, is a neat bit of satire. It is apparently a very gay trifle, but, nevertheless, it has a keen point. It is an arrow that pierces none the less deeply because it is feathered with a tinted plume. The prig is a type of the self-conceited, self-confident, self-sufficient “ seeker after truth ” more common in England than anywhere else. The prig pre- tends that he wants to find the truth, when he really only wants to gratify his vanity by an assumption of being of the aristocracy of letters. He is an Oxford man afflicted with an ambition to be “ higher ” than any of his brother- Anglicans. “ I happened to meet a Roman Catholic lady,” writes the prig, when he had gotten so ‘ high ’ that his head was thumping against the roof of the Anglican structure, “ whom I had known for many years. To her I confided the possibility of my considering the claims of the Church of Rome. Instead of expressing unbounded joy at the prospect of the conversion of a man of my attainments, to my utter astonishment she urged me to 4 pray for light.’ / pray for light! And she to recommend me to do so ! Why, this woman’s theological training would have been a mere grain of sand to the shores of the MODERN NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 43 Atlantic in comparison with mine. The temptation to point out the darkness of her own ignorance was well-ijigh irresistible, and her im- pertinence was unbearable ; but while I was still staggering with amazement she added that she would pray for me. This fairly took my breath away, and I fled from the scene. Verily, the assurance of some people is astounding ! A friend had once recommended me to endeavor to see a little behind the scenes before I made up my mind to join the Church of Rome, and I now felt that there was some force in his advice ; for if a Roman Catholic of nomental culture could be so impertinent as to suggest to an Oxford man who had taken high honors that he should pray for light, there must be something wrong about Romanism.” The prig progresses towards Agnosticism and narrates his experiences with delightful simplicity. He goes through Brahminism, Buddhism, and depicts Confucius with the same feeling of superiority. He is constantly confounded, but he does not know it. His meeting with an Agnostic boy who practises what the prig only theorizes on is a shock to the prig, but he recovers from it with his usual elasticity:, “When I joined my pupil in the school-room he said: ‘I am anxious for your opinion on the plurality of wives. The modern law of marriage is, of course, a mere matter of accident and con- venience. It seems to me that the deeply religious man should propagate the truth by marrying a thousand wives and bringing up his children to believe in nothing. This logical young Agnostic goes on to say on the pro- priety of marriage : “ My father, for instance, ought not to have married. He is gouty, there is lunacy in his family, and his temper is uncertain. I ought never to marry for the same reason, and furthermore, because I am delicate. Indeed, I doubt whether I am fit to survive ; and if my frame does not develop itself in three or four years I think it will be my duty to destroy myself. ,, The Life of a Prig is a clever booklet. The manner of the satire is most refined and in perfectly good taste. 44 MODERN NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. Henderson: “ The Prelate.” The Prelate: A Novel , by Isaac Henderson (Boston: Ticknor & Co.), is the story of a certain Mgr. Altieri, who feels that the people of Italy are thirsting for a “ pure and patriotic religion which they can make part of their daily lives.” He leaves the church and proceeds to establish this national religion in sympathy with the national wel- fare. The Jesuits become alarmed and form a horrible plot against him — so horrible that the author of this book cannot make out what it is. A young Jesuit, who calls himself “ Giuseppe,” and who is less hardened than his brethren, kneels near a beautiful American, Helen Rath- borne, in St. Peter’s during a “ festal The music is pow- erful, and under cover of its rolling tone the tender-hearted Giuseppe reveals the existence of the Jesuit plot to Miss Rathborne, who assists at church services armed with “ a translation of a Roman Catholic mission.” This episode was probably suggested by one said to have occurred in the Music Hall at Boston while the great organ was thun- dering. A housekeeper, determined not to let music in- convenience her, took advantage of a fugue to give some information to a friend, and when the sound abruptly ceased she was heard stridently saying, “We fry ours in oil.” A knowledge of the origin of the source of chapter xii. in The Prelate adds greatly to the interest of it. Sup- pose Giuseppe should be caught in a similar manner and be heard yelling his mysterious words in St. Peter’s! What would the Inquisition do? “ Presently,” writes Mr. Isaac Henderson, “ Helen started as she realized that something had been slipped into the hand which rested upon her parasol. Looking down quickly, she saw only the kneeling priest, whose lips moved as though he were praying, and whose man- ner betrayed no knowledge of the strange circumstance. As her eyes rested an instant upon his face he muttered distinctly, without seem- MODERN NOVELS AND NOVELISTS . 45 ing to see her, the word 4 Read,’ and was instantly absorbed again in prayer. Her first impulse was to open her hand and let the paper fall, but the thought flashed across her mind that possibly the young priest was in trouble, and, desiring to Communicate with the outer world, had chosen this opportunity and method. In any case, she reasoned, it could do no harm to examine the paper.” Miss Rathborne saw the words, “A friend is in danger — kneel! ” “ Without further hesitation she began to sink to her knees. Mrs. Wrexel noticed the movement, and, stiff little Protestant that she was, her surprise and horror were so evident that Helen intuitively straightened herself again.” But curiosity got the better of her scruples. She heard the young priest whisper, “ Tell Altieri,” and then, “ Guarda/” in “his native tongue.” “ How did you learn it?” she whispered. “ It was some time before he re- plied, but presently the peals of the organ burst forth, and he said, ‘ I overheard it, by God’s will ! ’ ” After a while “ the congregation broke out into a gen- eral response. ‘You must tell me your name,’ she whis- pered. ‘I dare not; I had better die .’ When the next general response was made she said, distinctly, ‘ Then I’ll not take the risk either.’ ” Finally the young priest whispered, “ Giuseppe.” Miss Rathborne visited the monsignore — or, rather, the late monsignore — to warn him. She was seen to enter his apartments by several ladies. She talked with this fascinating “ Old Catholic,” founder of the Italian patri- otic church, for two hours. 'f? Her troubles begin. The Americans and English in Rome “ cut ” her. She is taken up by an Italian princess who is no better than she should be. She will not reveal the reason that made her visit “ the prelate.” She has promised not to do it, and the young priest, who fears the vengeance of the Jesuits, insists that she shall lose her 46 MODERN NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. reputation rather than tell what the music in St. Peter’s had concealed so much more effectively than the fugue in the Boston Music Hall. On this absurd thread of plot The Prelate hangs. “ Monsignore ” Altieri is, of course, about to marry the heroic young American girl when he is fortunately drowned during a very weak storm. Elliott: “The Felmeres.” The Felmeres , by S. B. Elliott (New York: D. Apple- ton & Co.), is a novel with an Agnostic heroine. It is a powerful story, but not a healthy one. It leaves an im- pression of hopelessness which is unrelieved by the only consolation offered by the author: “ Behold, we know not anything : I can but trust that good shall fall At last — far off — at last to all, And every winter change to spring.” Helen Felmere has been brought up ip. a lonely country place by an infidel father. Near their house is a Catholic church, served by Father Paul, whom Mr. Felmere dis- likes intensely. Helen’s mother left the place years be- fore, and her husband thus speaks of her : “ ‘ She never loved me — never ! ’ he cried. ‘ She married me at the instigation of her priest for the benefit of their church ; she left me at the instigation of her priest because I was an obstinate heretic, and unexpectedly a poor one ! And she took with her my son — my only son ! — blasting and desolating my life because she was a Chris- tian ! And in this countryside she is almost canonized because she broke her vows to her God, leaving home, and husband, and what she thought was a dying child, in obedience to her priest and conscience ! She is sainted ; we are condemned, cast out ! ’ ” This is a false note. It jars all through the book. The author accepts this version of the motives which led a Catholic to become the wife of an infidel as true. In the mouth of an angry man it might not be out of place. But MODERN NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. *7 in a book in which the struggles of faith and un-faith are depicted, it is unfair to weigh down with assumed wrong the strongest power against infidelity. The reader is at once given to understand that a church which advises a mixed marriage for the sake of temporal gain, and then obliges a wife to desert her husband because the gain proves less than it was supposed to be, is practically worse than Agnosticism. The author of The Felmeres might have made a noble book had he taken the trouble to find out the real doctrine of the church on mixed marriages, or had he not been so eager to put the Catholic Church in the wrong. No hint is given that Mr. Felmere made the usual promises when he married his Catholic wife. He probably did, as he was dealing with such a zealous priest as “ Father Paul.” In that case it was he who broke his pledge by insisting on his children remaining unbap- tized. However, the Catholic Church in the very begin- ning of the book is branded with dishonesty. Later in the story Helen meets the Rev. Mr. Heath, the best ex- emplar of Christianity in the book. He turns out to be her brother: “ ‘ You were not educated an unbeliever ?’ she asked. “ 4 No ! I was brought up a Romanist/ “ 1 How, then, are you an Anglican ? * “ ‘ The Romish Church, or rather a mistaken priest, made my mother commit a great wrong ! ’ he answered slowly, ‘ and I could no longer tolerate or trust its teachings. It was a bitter trial to for- sake the religion of my mother, but truth compelled me to.’ ” It is not strange that Helen clings to her father’s mem- ory: he, at least, was consistent ; but the Christians around her only held one doctrine in common — hatred of Rome. She has married a man whom she does not love, and has met a man whom she does love. She is frank and plain- spoken to a degree that excites sympathy lor the husband, 4 8 MODERN NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. whose worst fault was in marrying her. She does not pretend to disguise her preference, although she remains pure in thought and deed. She has the pagan virtues, but not the Christian ones. A time comes when she must let her little child be baptized or flee with him. With a self-abnegation in contrast to the “ weakness ” of her “ Romanist ” mother, she resolves to give the child up to the Christians. He is about to be taken away trom her, with her consent, when she falls under the carriage-wheels in a last effort to grasp her child, and dies defying God. The sympathy of the reader is directed, so far as the author of The Felmeres can direct it, towards the heroine ; and Helen, compared with the Christians around her, is a person worthy of respect. The Christians have very lit- tle to say for their creed, and even Felix Gordon, the hero of the novel, is almost led to doubt by the young nationalist. He has few arguments against hers. Felix declares that “the Romish Church claims the authority to annul any oath or loose any tie, however sacred ” — im- plying that the church can break the marriage-bond after it has been once joined. Helen evidently had some ex- cuse for clinging to her rationalism when the only church that could give her consolation was so continually misrep- resented. Rev. Heber Newton attacks Christianity and calls it “ Romanism.” Protestants are constantly cutting the ground from under their own feet in their arguments with rationalists by doing the same thing. Helen Fel- mere will not believe in God, principally because she fears that there is a hereafter, in which her father will accuse her of having deserted him. None of the Christians in the novel have acumen enough to point out her illogical state of mind to her. Octave Feuillet, in La Morte , treats rationalism as applied to the education of young girls ; but his subject — a girl brought up by an infidel father — MODERN NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 49 steeps herself in crime, as Christianity does not control her thoughts or restrain her passions. The heroine of The Felmeres , on the contrary, does no wrong ; she suffers wrong; she resists temptation; she is truthful and pure without any strong motives for being so. She dislikes her husband ; her home has been made unhappy by a med- dling mother-in-law ; but she stands firm to her duty, and, in the eyes of the author, makes a sublime sacrifice of which her mother was incapable. She denies the exist- ence of God for fear that there is a God who has an eter- nity. The girl in The Bostonians , who is a mirror of purity, but who prefers free love to marriage, is really a less in- consistent creature. The author of The Felmeres can write well and strongly ; the pathos of the book is at times heart-touching ; but his study of the problem he touches and of the characters he sketches has not reached the inner life. Octave Feuillet makes his infidel woman a fiend; S. B. Elliott makes her a martyr; whereas in real life there lately died one who in her theories soared to a Positivist heaven, but in her life sank, weighed down by these beautiful theories, to the commission of public sin. This was George Eliot. VII. Dahlgren : “ The Lost Name.” It is safe to expect that the heroine of every eight Eng- lish novels out of ten will be a married woman in love with some paragon of the opposite sex. The afflicted fair who marries the wrong man is a favorite with the “ lady novel- ist.” And an essay on the pruriency of the “lady nov- elist’s ” manner of putting her heroines into suggestive situations might be made as trenchant as Louis Veuillot’s famous- attack on the femmes-aateurs of his time. A batch 50 MODERN NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. of these have gone into the waste-basket. The Lost Name , by Madeline Vinton Dahlgren (Boston: Ticknor & Co.), is not among them. It is the story of a young American whose ancestor back in the reign of the French king Louis XV. dropped his name. He confesses this deplorable fact to the Southern girl he expects to marry. He is in the position of little Bo-peep after she lost her sheep — or rather, as if little Bo-peep’s great-grandfather had told her that the sheep had been lost years ago. Lit- tle Bo-peep, presumably a child of discretion, would have made no attempt to take up a wild-sheep chase. But the young American does, because the proud Southern girl refuses to marry him until he finds out the name his ancestor had dropped ; he succeeds with much ease. He becomes the Marquis de Saint-Sorlin. Having elevated him to this pinnacle, Mrs. Dahlgren shows how strong his American blood is. “ First and best,” writes the Mar- quis de Saint-Sorlin, “ I love my -native country, America, and I meet the inexorable fate of its men. I have be- come matter-of-fact. I have embraced a profession. I am in league with the great power of this nation. My whole life is now devoted to romancing, but in a business way; for, dear reader, I am a journalist.” A Lost Name will not bring a blush to the cheek of any young person. Laurence Tadema ; “ Love’s Martyr.” Lorenz Alma-Tadema has made himself famous by his sensuous — not sensual — pictures, in which color runs riot, the green sea bathes an azure sky, Roman figures lounge among poppies, oleanders, and peacocks on white marble terraces. The artist was born in Holland, though he is now a naturalized British citizen. “Alma ” was added to his family name, Tadema, to give him a better place in the alphabetical picture-catalogues. His daughter, Lau- MODERN NOVELS AND NOVELISTS. 51 rcnce, now offers the world a novel. The style is won- derfully clear and idiomatic. Love's Martyr (New York: D. Appleton & Co.) is an intense story. It would have pleased Rossetti. It is an analysis, very skillfully made, of an unusual and morbid character. The manner of the book deserves the praise it has received. Miss Austen herself could not have described the bucolic English squire’s family more forcibly and with less effort, and Charlotte Bronte’s Ja?ie Eyre has no passages stronger than some in Love'' s Martyr. The book is quite as un- healthy as Jane Eyre. Who is “love’s martyr?” The woman who marries a man, having offered herself as the mistress of another man and been rejected? Or the man who, knowing this, takes her to be his wife and then suf- fers the agonies of jealousy, founded on this tact and on the knowledge that she holds her lover still in her heart? Laurence Alma-Tadema does not answer this question. Her affair — she evidently holds the theory of the realists — is merely to present a picture as she sees it, not to draw conclusions or answer questions. Rosamund, the heroine of Love's Martyr , is a girl who has been brought up with- out religion. Her father, an Englishman, married her mother in Paris. They were both murdered during the Reign of Terror, and the child is sent home to her uncle, who is a country squire of the eighteenth century, coarse, brutal, good-hearted when in the humor. The child is adopted by him, and, in her new home, leads the life of an outlaw. Mrs. Merry, the squire’s wife, is equally coarse and much meaner. She gives a sketch of her first intro- duction to Rosamund: