The Adopted Heir
By . Philadelphia : T. B. Peterson & Brothers.
MISS PARDOE ought to do better than this. There is much ability displayed in her “ Court of France ” ; and she has written a very clever story, entitled “ The Romance of the Harem.” But this book is thoroughly feeble and commonplace. The customary rich and whimsical nabob, whom we all know so well, has returned to England, and is deliberating upon the claims to his wealth of his several relations. His decision is soon formed, but shrouded in an impenetrable mystery, which is open to the usual objection to the novelist’s impenetrable mysteries, of being perfectly transparent. Having divined who will be the heir, after reading forty pages, we are a little impatient that Miss Pardoe should cherish the secret with every imaginable precaution until the 350th page, when she brings it out with a flourish, as if no human sagacity could possibly have discovered it.
This keeping secrets that are no secrets, the besetting weakness of novelists, was once quite affecting. When Nicholas Nickleby acted at Mr. Crummles’s theatre; a thrill of terror ran through the unsophisticated spectators, as the wicked relation poked a sword at him in the dark in every direction except where his legs were plainly visible. But readers are more exacting now. And we are all frightfully sagacious. Long reading of novels gives a fatal skill in anticipating their issues. If in the first chapter the poor little brother runs away to sea, his anxious friends may bewail his loss, but we remain calm in the conviction that he will return, yellow and rich, precisely in time to frustrate the designs of the wicked, and to reward innocence and constancy with ten thousand a year. All the good people in a story may be puzzled to detect the author of an alarming fraud; but we know better, and, fixing with more than a detective’s accuracy upon the gentlemanly, plausible villain, drag him forth long before our author is ready to present him to our (theoretically) astonished eyes. The whole village may be deceived by the venerable stranger, with his white hair and benevolent spectacles, but our unerring eye instantly discerns in him Black Donald, the robber-captain ; and if we do not tremble for our heroine, it is only because we are morally certain that her deadly peril is only an excuse for her inevitable lover’s “ dashing up on a coalblack barb, urged to his utmost speed,” and delivering the desolate fair, who has won our regard alike by her indignant virtue, and the skill with which, while laboring under uncontrollable agitation, she constructs sentences so ponderous and intricate that Mr. Burke’s periods are trifles in comparison. And we know all this, simply because there are certain things to be done, and only so many people to do them. Miss Austen, indeed, could keep her secrets impenetrable ; but the art died with her, and our common sense is daily insulted by these weak attempts at mystery. If the secret is one that cannot be kept, why, let the author tell it us at once, and we can then follow with sympathy the attempts to baffle those in the story who are trying to detect it, instead of being offended with a shallow artifice. Here lies the artistic error of that very clever book, “ Paul Ferroll.” We all see at once that Mr. Ferroll murdered his wife, and the author would have lost nothing and gained much by taking us into his confidence.
The style of the “ Adopted Heir ” is at once pompous and feeble. From writers of the Mrs. Southworth school we should expect nothing else ; but Miss Pardoe was capable of something better.