Balzac’s Novels in English.  The Duchesse de Langeais and Other Stories; Cesar Birotteau. (Routledge and Sons.)

TWO NEW NOVELS

(Pall Mall Gazette, September 16, 1880.)

Most modern novels are more remarkable for their crime than for their culture, and Mr. G. Manville Fenn’s last venture is no exception to the general rule.  The Master of the Ceremonies is turbid, terrifying and thrilling.  It contains, besides many ’moving accidents by flood and field,’ an elopement, an abduction, a bigamous marriage, an attempted assassination, a duel, a suicide, and a murder.  The murder, we must acknowledge, is a masterpiece.  It would do credit to Gaboriau, and should make Miss Braddon jealous.  The Newgate Calendar itself contains nothing more fascinating, and what higher praise than this can be given to a sensational novel?  Not that Lady Teigne, the hapless victim, is killed in any very new or subtle manner.  She is merely strangled in bed, like Desdemona; but the circumstances of the murder are so peculiar that Claire Denville, in common with the reader, suspects her own father of being guilty, while the father is convinced that the real criminal is his eldest son.  Stuart Denville himself, the Master of the Ceremonies, is most powerfully drawn.  He is a penniless, padded dandy who, by a careful study of the ‘grand style’ in deportment, has succeeded in making himself the Brummel of the promenade and the autocrat of the Assembly Rooms.  A light comedian by profession, he is suddenly compelled to play the principal part in a tragedy.  His shallow, trivial nature is forced into the loftiest heroism, the noblest self-sacrifice.  He becomes a hero against his will.  The butterfly goes to martyrdom, the fop has to become fine.  Round this character centres, or rather should centre, the psychological interest of the book, but unfortunately Mr. Fenn has insisted on crowding his story with unnecessary incident.  He might have made of his novel ‘A Soul’s Tragedy,’ but he has produced merely a melodrama in three volumes.  The Master of the Ceremonies is a melancholy example of the fatal influence of Drury Lane on literature.  Still, it should be read, for though Mr. Fenn has offered up his genius as a holocaust to Mr. Harris, he is never dull, and his style is on the whole very good.  We wish, however, that he would not try to give articulate form to inarticulate exclamations.  Such a passage as this is quite dreadful and fails, besides, in producing the effect it aims at: 

’He—­he—­he, hi—­hi—­hi, hec—­hec—­hec, ha—­ha—­ha! ho—­ho!  Bless my—­hey—­ha! hey—­ha! hugh—­hugh—­hugh!  Oh dear me!  Oh—­why don’t you—­heck—­heck—­heck—­heck—­heck! shut the—­ho—­ho—­ho—­ho—­hugh—­hugh—­window before I—­ho—­ho—­ho—­ho!’

This horrible jargon is supposed to convey the impression of a lady coughing.  It is, of course, a mere meaningless monstrosity on a par with spelling a sneeze.  We hope that Mr. Fenn will not again try these theatrical tricks with language, for he possesses a rare art—­the art of telling a story well.