Read Ebook: The Atlantic Monthly Volume 14 No. 82 August 1864 A Magazine of Literature Art and Politics by Various

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THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by TICKNOR AND FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

CHARLES READE.

Some one lately took occasion, in passing, to class Charles Reade with the clever writers of the day, sandwiching him between Anthony Trollope and Wilkie Collins,--for no other reason, apparently, than that he never, with Chinese accuracy, gives us gossiping drivel that reduces life to the dregs of the commonplace, or snarls us in any inextricable tangle of plots.

Charles Reade is the prose for Browning. The temperament of the two in their works is almost identical, having first allowed for the delicate femineity proper to every poet; and the richness that Browning lavishes till it strikes the world no more than the lavish gold of the sun, the lavish blue of the sky, Reade, taking warning, hoards, and lets out only by glimpses. Yet such glimpses! for beauty and brilliancy and strength, when they do occur, unrivalled. Yet never does he desert his narrative for them one moment; on the contrary, we might complain that he almost ignores the effect of Nature on various moods and minds: in a volume of six hundred pages, the sole bit of so-called fine writing is the following, justified by the prominence of its subject in the incidents, and showing in spite of itself a certain masculine contempt for the finicalities of language:--

"The leaves were many shades deeper and richer than any other tree could show for a hundred miles round,--a deep green, fiery, yet soft; and then their multitude,--the staircases of foliage, as you looked up the tree, and could scarce catch a glimpse of the sky,--an inverted abyss of color, a mound, a dome, of flake-emeralds that quivered in the golden air.

"And now the sun sets,--the green leaves are black,--the moon rises,--her cold light shoots across one-half that giant stem.

"How solemn and calm stands the great round tower of living wood, half ebony, half silver, with its mighty cloud above of flake-jet leaves tinged with frosty fire at one edge!"

This oak was in Brittany,--the very one, perhaps, before which,

"So hollow, huge, and old, It looked a tower of ruined mason-work, At Merlin's feet the wileful Vivien lay."

"'A lie is a lump of sin and a piece of folly,' cries Jacintha.

"Edouard notes it down, and then says, in allusion to a previous remark of hers,--

"'I did not think you were five-and-twenty, though.'

"'I am, then,--don't you believe me?'

"'Why not? Indeed, how could I disbelieve you after your lecture?'

"'It is well,' said Jacintha, with dignity.

"She was twenty-seven by the parish-books."

There is a good deal of picturesque beauty in this volume, and at the opening of its affairs there occurs a paragraph which we appropriate, not merely for its merit, nor because it is the only "interior" that we can recall in all his novels, but because also it contains a characteristically fearless measuring of swords with a great champion:--

"A spacious saloon panelled: dead, but snowy white picked out sparingly with gold. Festoons of fruit and flowers finely carved in wood on some of the panels. These also not smothered with gilding, but as it were gold speckled here and there like tongues of flame winding among insoluble snows.... Midway from the candle to the distant door its twilight deepened, and all became shapeless and sombre. The prospect ended half-way, sharp and black, as in those out-o'-door closets imagined and painted by Mr. Turner, whose Nature comes to a full stop as soon as Mr. Turner sees no further occasion for her, instead of melting by fine expanse and exquisite gradation into genuine distance, as Nature does in Claude and in Nature. To reverse the picture: standing at the door, you looked across forty feet of black, and the little corner seemed on fire, and the fair heads about the candle shone like the heads of St. Cecilias and Madonnas in an antique stained-glass window. At last Laure observed the door open, and another candle glowed upon Jacintha's comely peasant-face in the doorway; she dived into the shadow, and emerged into light again close to the table, with napkins on her arm."

The book abounds, as indeed all its companions do, in quaint passages, comical turns of a word, shrewd sayings,--of which a handful:--

'"Now you know,' said Dard, 'if I am to do this little job to-day, I must start.'

"'Who keeps you?' was the reply.

"Thus these two loved."

"It was her feelings, her confidence, the little love wanted,--not her secret: that lay bare already to the shrewd young minx,--I beg her pardon,--lynx."

Another involves a curious philosophy, summed up in the following formula:--

"She does not love him quite enough.

"He loves her a little too much. Cure,--marriage."

But there are one or two scenes in this tale of "White Lies" perfectly matchless for fire and spirit; and to support the assertion, the reader must allow a citation. And he will pardon the first for the sake of the others, since Josephine is the betrothed of Camille Dujardin.

"When he uttered these terrible words, each of which was a blow with a bludgeon to the Baroness, the old lady, whose courage was not equal to her spirit, shrank over the side of her arm-chair, and cried piteously,--'He threatens me! he threatens me! I am frightened!'--and put up her trembling hands, so suggestive was the notary's eloquence of physical violence. Then his brutality received an unexpected check. Imagine that a sparrow-hawk had seized a trembling pigeon, and that a royal falcon swooped, and with one lightning-like stroke of body and wing buffeted him away, and there he was on his back, gaping and glaring and grasping at nothing with his claws. So swift and irresistible, but far more terrible and majestic, Josephine de Beaurepaire came from her chair with one gesture of her body between her mother and the notary, who was advancing on her with arms folded in a brutal menacing way,--not the Josephine we have seen her, the calm, languid beauty, but the Demoiselle de Beaurepaire,--her great heart on fire, her blood up,--not her own only, but all the blood of all the De Beaurepaires,--pale as ashes with wrath, her purple eyes flaring, and her whole panther-like body ready either to spring or strike.

"And her hand was up with the word, up, up,--higher it seemed than ever a hand was lifted before. And if he had hesitated one moment, I believe it would have come down; and if it had, he would have gone to her feet before it: not under its weight,--the lightning is not heavy,--but under the soul that would have struck with it. But there was no need: the towering threat and the flaming eye and the swift rush buffeted the caitiff away: he recoiled three steps, and nearly fell down. She followed him as he went, strong in that moment as Hercules, beautiful and terrible as Michael driving Satan. He dared not, or rather he could not, stand before her: he writhed and cowered and recoiled down the room while she marched upon him. Then the driven serpent hissed as it wriggled away.

"'You, too, daughter of Sa--'

"The old lady moaning and trembling and all but fainting in her chair; the young noble like destroying angel, hand in air, and great eye scorching and withering; and the caitiff wriggling out at the door, wincing with body and head, his knees knocking, his heart panting, yet raging, his teeth gnashing, his cheek livid, his eye gleaming with the fire of hell."

Too much of this sort of thing becomes meretricious; a man is never the master of his subject, when he suffers himself to be carried away by it. And though a fault of haste is pardonable, when lost in fine execution, we must acknowledge that there is certainly something very "Frenchy" in this scene,--a remark, though, which can hardly be considered as derogatory, when we remember that altogether the most readable fiction of the day is French itself. Our author is evidently a great admirer of Victor Hugo, though he is no such careful artist in language: he seldom closes with such tremendous subjects as that adventurous writer attempts; but he has all the sharp antithesis, the pungent epigram of the other, and in his freest flight, though he peppers us as prodigally with colons, he never becomes absurd, which the other is constantly on the edge of being.

The next scene which we adduce is that where the battered figure of a pale, grisly man walks into the garrison-town of Bayonne, after a three-years' absence, explained only to his disgrace, mutely overcomes the guard, and rings the bell of the Governor's house.

"The servant left him in the hall, and went up-stairs to tell his master. At the name, the Governor reflected, then frowned, then bade his servant reach him down a certain book. He inspected it.

"'I thought so: any one with him?'

"'No, Monsieur the Governor.'

"'Load my pistols: put them on the table: put that book back: show him in: and then order a guard to the door.'

"The Governor was a stern veteran, with a powerful brow, a shaggy eyebrow, and a piercing eye. He never rose, but leaned his chin on his hand, and his elbow on a table that stood between them, and eyed the new-comer very fixedly and strangely.

"'We did not expect to see you on this side of the Pyrenees.'

"'Nor I myself, Governor.'

"'What do you come to me for?'

"'A welcome, a suit of regimentals, and money to take me to Paris.'

"'And suppose, instead of that, I turn out a corporal's guard, and bid them shoot you in the court-yard?'

"'It would be the drollest thing you ever did, all things considered,' said the other, coolly; but he looked a little surprised.

"The Governor went for the book he had lately consulted, found the page, handed it to the rusty officer, and watched him keenly: the blood rushed all over his face, and his lip trembled; but his eye dwelt stern, yet sorrowful, on the Governor.

"'I have read your book: now read mine.'

"He drew off his coat, and showed his wrists and arms, blue and waled.

"'Can you read that, Monsieur?'

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