Latest / Reviews / 033 - New Novels October 28 1886

Transcript

033 - New Novels October 28 1886 · Reviews

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Section thirty two of reviews by Oscar Wilde. This is
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Recording by John Rose, Reviews by Oscar Wilde, edited by
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Robert Ross. Section thirty two New Novels, Pallmell Gazette, October
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: twenty eighth, eighteen eighty six. Astray, A Tale of a
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Country Town is a very serious volume. It has taken
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: four people to write it, and even to read it
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: requires assistance. Its dullness is premeditated and deliberate, and comes
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: from a laudable desire to rescue fiction from flippancy. It is,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: in fact tedious from the noblest motives, and wearisome through
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: its good intentions. Yet the story itself is not an
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: un in interesting one. Quite the contrary. It deals with
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: the attempt of a young doctor to build up a
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: noble manhood on the ruins of a wasted youth Burton King,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: while little more than a reckless lad forges the name
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: of a dying man, is arrested and sent to penal
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: servitude for seven years. On his discharge, he comes to
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: live with his sisters in a little country town, and
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: finds that his real punishment begins when he is free,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: for prison has made him a pariah. Still, through the
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: nobility and self sacrifice of his life, he gradually wins
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: himself a position, and ultimately marries the prettiest girl in
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: the book. His character is on the whole well drawn,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: and the authors have almost succeeded in making him good
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: without making him priggish. The method, however, by which the
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: story is told, is extremely tiresome. It consists of an
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: interminable series of long letters by different people, and of
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: extracts from various diaries. The book consequently is piecemeal and unsatisfactory.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: It fails in producing any unity of effect. It contains
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: the rough material for a story, but is not a
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: completed work of art. It is, in fact, more of
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: a note book than a novel. We fear that too
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: many collaborators are like too many cooks, and spoil the dinner. Still,
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: in this tale of a country town, there are certain
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: solid qualities, and it is a book that one can,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: with perfect safety recommend to other people. Miss Rhoda Broughton
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: belongs to a very different school. No one can ever,
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: say of her that she has tried to separate flippancy
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: from fiction, and whatever harsh criticisms may be passed on
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: the construction of sentences, she at least possesses that one
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: touch of vulgarity that makes the whole world kin. We
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: are sorry, however, to see, from a perusal of Betty's visions,
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: that Miss Broughton has been attending the meetings of the
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: Psychical Society in search of copy. Mysticism is not our mission,
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: and telepathy should be left to Messrs Myers and Gurney.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: In Philistia lies Miss Broughton's true sphere, and to Philistia
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: she should return. She knows more about the vanities of
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: this world than about this world's visions, and a possible
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: Garrison town is better than an impossible ghost land. That
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: other person who gives missus Alfred Hunt the title for
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: her three volume novel is a young girl by name
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Hester Langdale, who, for the sake of mister Godfrey Daysford,
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: sacrifices everything away woman can sacrifice, and, on his marrying
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: someone else, becomes a hospital nurse. The hospital nurse idea
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: is perhaps used by novelists a little too often in
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: cases of this kind. Still, it has an artistic as
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: well as an ethical value. The interest of the story centers, however,
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: in mister Dalsford, who marries not for love but for ambition,
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: and is rather severely punished for doing so. Missus Dalesford
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: has a sister called Polly, who develops, according to the
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: approved psychological method, from a hubbledyhoy girl into a tender,
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: sweet woman. Polly is delightfully drawn, But the most attractive
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: character in the book, strangely enough, is mister Godfrey Dalsford.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: He is weak, but he is very charming. So charming
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: indeed is he that it is only when one closes
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: the book that one thinks of censuring him. While we
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: are in direct contact with him, we are fascinated. Such
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: a character has, at any rate the morality of truth
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: about it. Here literature has faithfully followed life. Missus Hunt
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: writes a very pleasing style, bright and free from affectation. Indeed,
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: everything in her work is clever except the title A
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: Child of the Revolution is by the accomplished authoress of
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: the Attelier du Lies. The scene opens in France in
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: seventeen ninety three, and a plot is extremely ingenious the
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: wife of Jacques Vaude, a Leon's deputy, loses by illness
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: her baby girl while her husband is absent in Paris,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: where he has gone to see Danton. At the instigation
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: of an old priest, she adopts a child of the
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: same age, a little orphan of noble birth whose parents
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: have died in the reign of Terror, and passes it
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: off as her own. Her husband, a stern and ardent Republican,
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: worships the child with a passion like that of Jean
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: Valjean for Cosette. Nor is it till she has grown
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: to perfect womanhood that he discovers that he has given
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: his love to the daughter of his enemy. This is
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: a noble story, but the workmanship, though good of its kind,
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: is hardly adequate to the idea. The style lacks grace, movement,
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: and variety. It is correct but monotonous. Seriousness. Like property,
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: has its duties as well as its rights, and the
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: first duty of a novel is to please a child
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: of the revolution. Hardly does that. Still it has merits.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: Aphrodite is a romance of ancient Halus. The supposed date
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: as given in the first line of Miss Safford's Admirable
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: translation is five p. Fifty one BC. This, however, is
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: probably a misprint. At least we cannot believe that so
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: careful an archaeologist as Ernst Eckstein would talk of a
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: famous school of sculpture existing at Athens in the sixth century,
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: and the whole character of the civilization is of a
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: much later date. The book may be described as a
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: new setting of the tale of Acontius and Sidipe. And
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: though Eckstein is a sort of literary tadema and cares
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: more for his backgrounds than he does for his figures,
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: still he can tell a story very well, and his
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: hero is made of flesh and blood. As regards the style,
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: the Germans have not the same feeling as we have
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: about technicalities in literature. To our ears, words such as
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: Feraian sikhos yonistis, syrides and a like sound harshly in
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: a novel and given an air of pedantry, not of picturesqueness.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: Yet in its tone, Aphrodite reminds us of the late
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: Greek novels. Indeed, it may be one of the lost
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: tales of Miletus. It deserves to have many readers and
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: a better binding one astray a tale of a Country
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: Town by Charlotte M. Young, Mary Bramston, Cristabelle Coleridge and
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: Smey Stewart hatchards Two. Biddy's Visions by Root of Broughton,
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: Ortlige and Sons. Three That Other Person by Missus Alfred Hunt,
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: Chatto and Windus. Four. A Child of the Revolution by
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: the author of Mademoiselle Marie Hatchardson. Five. Ephrodite Translated from
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: the German of Ernst x D. By Mary J. Safford,
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: New York, William and Gottzberger, London, Trubner and Company. End
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: of Section thirty two New Novels.