A Terrible Temptation
By . Boston: James R. Osgood & Co.
MR. READE opens for us a question which we have been in the habit of thinking closed. We had often been told that the vast enlargement of the reading public by the addition of women had purified literature, and we had come to believe it. Such novelists as Scott, Dickens, and Thackeray were contrasted with Smollett and Fielding, greatly to the disadvantage of the latter as far at least as concerned the company to which they introduced us ; and there was rejoicing at the reformation of Bulwer in his later novels, which were found much purer and loftier in aim than his earlier ones. Perhaps we were somewhat deceived and self-deceived in all this. The characters in Dickens’s romances have been by no means exemplary in calling, yet his books were declared over and over again such as could be read aloud in mixed companies, and partaken of by ladies and young persons, not only without injury, but with benefit, Thackeray, so far from being considered immoral, has been held up as a moralist. Yet Dickens makes us weep for a thief’s mistress, and Thackeray amuses us with the adventurousness, to call it no worse, of Becky Sharp. In fact, if we look over the fiction of our own time, shall we really find it improved as regards the morals of the persons figuring in it? We do not speak of the lady novelists on both sides of the Atlantic, and the long train of bigamists, murderesses, adulteresses, and dubiosities whom they have brought into being, but of the best writers of the sex which has, on the whole, kept clearest of these contaminating presences.
The fact being as it is, then, why should such large numbers of people have been shocked at the appearance of La Somerset in polite fiction ? Why should “ A Terrible Temptation” he thought less adapted for the family circle than “Oliver Twist” or “Vanity Fair”? Is it something in Mr. Reade’s tone or manner ? Certainly no one can be less insinuating than he, and it cannot be said that he “ makes vice attractive,” which is supposed to be the aim of wicked novelists. On the contrary, we should say that Rhoda Somerset is as disagreeable a person, both before and after her conversion, as one could well meet; and her half-sister, though more interesting, is not a bit more charming. What, then, is the trouble ? Is it a certain rudeness in handling facts from which there is, by the consent of civilization, a general shrinking ? Is it a robust indifference to the feeling with which most people regard topics relating to the most intimate affairs of life ; Must the warmest admirer of the book acknowledge that it is really wanting in delicacy, while he utterly denies that it is immoral ? Would he or would he not have it placed amongst the fruit defendu in the bookcase of which papa keeps the key, while all other novels of our generation are scattered broadcast about the house ? Does it appeal more than any recent work of any great English writer to the native reluctance and doubt good people have about letting young people read everything ?
Concerning its literary character we have no misgiving. It seems to us one of the best of the author’s works, and it requires no greater allowance for his caprices and eccentricities than faultier books. Of course, we are rather tired of the insane-hospital business, and of the boat-race business, and the universal knowledge of the author upon all topics, from horsemanship and millinery up ; and of course we feel that the introduction of Mr. Rolfe is something rather to be suffered than enjoyed. That author’s apparatus and manæuvres are in droll disproportion to the effects he produces, and his habit of keeping so many scrap-books and indexing them so thoroughly, and then indexing their indexes, however surprising in itself, is of no great use in the story, and it is all injurious, we should say, to the artistic conceptions of Mr. Reade; while the knowingness and conceit of the former gentleman interfere sadly with our enjoyment of the genius of the latter. He is a very minor personage, however, amongst the people of the book, of whom the most important are the women. Perhaps the men seem all a little feeble because of the greater strength with which the characters of the other sex are portrayed. We get no very deep sense of either of the Bassetts, though Richard Bassett is the better of the two, and neither is unnatural.
The story, as we suppose nearly all our readers know already, turns upon Lady Bassett’s terrible temptation to pass off another’s child as her own, and thus rescue her husband from the despondency and danger of insanity into which he has fallen. Before her marriage she was loved by both the cousins, by Sir Charles, the rich Bassett, who wins her, and by Richard, the poor Bassett, who loses her. They hate each other as much as they love her, because of the entail which was barred in favor of Sir Charles’s father at the expense of Richard’s. A sister of Rhoda Somerset’s takes service with Lady Bassett, and Richard, in his constant desire to possess himself of some fact injurious to his enemy, tampers with her. It is this woman’s child and his which Lady Bassett passes off upon Sir Charles, neither Richard nor herself knowing his share of the parentage. The boy turns out bad, and makes all the misery that could be expected for Lady Bassett and her husband, and the matter grows worse and worse when her ladyship comes to have children of her own. We will not give a sketch of the whole plot. From what we have said it can be conjectured how a profounder psychologist than Mr. Reade would have used the matter of this terrible temptation. One imagines, for instance, what effects Auerbach or Hawthorne would have produced with it. But Mr. Reade chooses rather to regard its external aspects. He makes us see rather the havoc wrought in Lady Bassett’s health than the agony of her soul, and he delights in tracing the complication in which it involves all these friends and foes. No doubt this is well, and he chose wisely for himself. Perhaps he is even truer to life than the deeper poet would have been.
Lady Bassett has the feline and secretive characteristics which Mr. Reade likes to find coexisting with the most angelic unselfishness in women. She sins not for herself, but for her husband in her deceit, and she is always sublimely generous. Of course she is charming, hut she does not compare as a creation with Reginald’s real mother, Mary Wells. She is the most triumphant figure in the book. She has never had any conscience, and has always managed to turn her falseness to the best account. When she discovers her state, it is she who suggests to Lady Bassett the idea of passing off Reginald upon Sir Charles as his son ; and when the child is born, she becomes its nurse and remains the boy’s fast friend and ally in his wickedness and unruliness. It is impossible to hint all the slyness and duplicity of such a nature, and the reader must turn to the book for a full conception of it. We must make it understood, however, that Mary Wells never has any serious purpose of evil nor any sense of sinning. Her half-sister, Rhoda Somerset, whose elaborate presentation in the early chapters of the book is not quite justified by her share in the action afterwards, marries and becomes a devoted wife and a very aggressive Christian. She goes about preaching and converting sinners ; and when time brings Mary Wells’s iniquities to her knowledge, she tries the effect of her exhortations upon that tough soul. We must not present the result in any words less satisfying and delicious than Mr. Reade’s own : “ La Marsh set herself to convert Mary, and often exhorted her to penitence. She bore this pretty well for some time, being overawed by old reminiscences of sisterly superiority, but at last her vanity rebelled. ‘ Repent ! and repent ! ’ cried she. ‘ Why you be like a cuckoo, all in one song. One would think I’d been and robbed a church. ’T is all very well for you to repent, as led a fastish life at starting; but I never done nothing as I'm ashamed on.' ”
Mr. Reade moralizes upon the facts or people of his story very little ; and it is no doubt this which has done him injury with a large class of readers who cannot understand the difference between the artistic reluctance to enforce a lesson that ought to teach itself, and callousness to the sins described. We wish for his own sake he had moralized still less, and spared us the wisdom which he derives from it all: “You men and women who judge this Bella Bassett be firm, and do not let her amiable qualities or her good intentions blind you in a plain matter of right and wrong ; be charitable and ask yourselves how often in your lives you have seen yourselves or any other human being resist a terrible temptation. My experience is that we resist other people’s temptations nobly and succumb to our own.”