Mr. Deforest's Novels
WHAT novels have we ? Descending from the high place where stand the works of our pre-eminent literary artist, Hawthorne, and excluding from present consideration all foreign novels, let us cull our library for a dozen American tales,—American in authorship, character, and mise en scène. It is a difficult task where there are so many of proximate rank, and yet, where judgment fails to decide differences, we may leave the choice to our own affections.
After writing fifty names with scratchings and additions, we copy, exactly in the state of mind with which the shivering, long-hesitating bather at length plunges into the water, this list: Margaret, Last of the Mohicans, Typee, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Rutledge, Virginia Comedians, Queechy, Elsie Venner, Hannah Thurston, Horse Shoe Robinson, Rate Beaumont From what we want, hope for, and believe shall come, i. e. the great singer, humorist, and teacher with his story, to what we have, is no disheartening fall. From that ideal best to our possessed good is not so far.
The last in our list, and the other works by the same author, J. W. DeForest, show, notwithstanding faults and shortcomings, indications of something fresh, strong, and advancing. As you go from one work to another of the author, your early inclination to like him grows until you have the assurance that he is more than a talented writer, — a straight, broad, truthful man gifted with the twin honesties, moral and mental ; that lie is a good type of an American, not a Bostonian, not a Chicagoan, not a New-Yorker, not a Charlestonian ; artistic, but not too scholarly ; a man probably of as much action and travel as of imagination and study, writing with a strong, broad-nibbed pen that sometimes perhaps blots from coarseness, yet occasionally refines its lines to delicate elegance. What he has written is our subject, and yet most irresistibly we draw first an idea of the writer ; so the reader of the books we write of finds himself doing. Whether that speaks more strongly for the man or for the author we need not stop to consider.
The author of Kate Beaumont began authorship in 1856 with Oriental Acquaintance ; or, Letters from Syria, followed by European Acquaintance, another book of travel, in 1858. Between the two came his first novel, Witching Times, printed as a serial in Putnam’s Monthly, fifteen years ago. His next novel, Sea Cliff, was published in 1859. Miss Ravenel’s Conversion from Secession to Loyalty appeared in 1867 ; Overland, in 1871 ; Kate Beaumont also in 1871: the former written for The Galaxy', the latter for The Atlantic. At present we find a story of his called The Wetherel Affair running in the Galaxy and Honest John Vane in these pages.
Beside these, Mr. DeForest has been a prolific writer of short tales for the magazines. We have looked up more than thirty since 1868, not including his notable series a few years ago in Harper’s Magazine, entitled Sketches of Bureau Life. Many of these are certainly among the very best of our American magazine stories, and a portion of them have, beside their literary merit, value as materials for future history, so admirably do they portray the manner of life, tone of thought, etc., of certain portions of our country; whilst there is a literalness of surroundings—descriptions of scenery, war records, and political influences — that is wonderfully honest. There seems to have been a cause for each tale. The reader’s imagination works more than the writer’s ; the latter’s strength is to observe closely, keenly, and humorously, and then recount easily, picturesquely, and conscientiously. The great gap of work between 1859 and 1868 is probably accounted for by Mr. DeForest’s three or four years of field service in the army, where he rose to be major, and afterward his several years of department and bureau duty. But those years carried him from the level of Witching Times and Sea Cliff to that which he now occupies ; and each advance of his, whether through the ramble of a story or the march of a novel, has been an ascent, an exhibition of new health and power.
The style and field of Mr. DeForest before and since the war are widely separated.
Southern life or the extremes and colors of Southern character, and the new stage, founded on the Rebellion, of tragedy and passion on which even the average humanity of our diverse Americanisms displays depth, humor, and picturesqueness unsuspected before, furnish material and opportunities most adequate to Mr. DeForest’s vigorous art. We have suggestions of his forte in the stories Parole d’Honneur (Harper’s, August, 1868), The Colored Member (Galaxy, March, 1872), An Independent Kuklux (Galaxy, April, 1872), A Gentleman of an Old School (Atlantic, May, 1868), and complete proof of it in the novel, Kate Beaumont. But before the war his work was less assured, had less individuality. Now we sometimes think of him as a Hogarth with the pen : then there was an influence of Balzac, as we have imagined, perhaps unjustly, in the best book of his old era. Sea Cliff; or, The Mystery of the Westervelts. It is the story of a “second circle of New York society” family and their guests at the Westervelts’ country-place on the Sound. Mr. Louis Fitz Hugh, who has made the acquaintance of the Westervelts in Europe, goes to call on them at Sea Cliff, and an old tendresse for the Misses Westervelts (he is uncertain for which), revived by this visit, induces him to take summer quarters in the neighboring village of Rockford. At his first call he overhears a conversation that introduces the mystery, at first supposed to be Mr. Westervelt’s cruelty to his wife.
Mr. Somerville, a beau of utmost elegance, savoir-faire, fascination, and suavity, a man of personal force and beauty, of talent and address, is a guest of the Westervelts and the Mephistopheles of the story,— a coarse, cruel, mean brute, to whom respectable birth, early associations, worldly experience, and adroit talents have lent the disguise of a society-knight. Mr. Somerville is a lawyer by profession, and was, before Mrs. Westervelt’s marriage, her guardian. Now this lady is a weak, vain woman of kind intentions, and was in her girlhood very pretty. An uncle of wealth bad adopted her, and indulged her in extravagance. It was supposed that this uncle would will his property to her ; but when Somerville, his lawyer, discovered, a short time before the old man’s death, that the money would go to others, the Van Leers, and only ten thousand to the girl, he, by the influence of his talents, his attentions, and a course of flattery and duplicity, entrapped his ward into altering the uncle’s will. This crime committed, almost against her intention, she became the villain’s victim for life, he finding the means for gambling and debauchery by plucking the poor woman of purse and jewelry, holding over her as his scourge, all the time, her crime. Loving the man whom she afterwards married, — Mr. Westervelt, — she is obliged to hide her slavery from her family, whilst she must admit the villain who governs her to the society of her step-daughters and to the constant hospitality of her home. Fitz Hugh’s love for Mary Westervelt brings about the dénouement, when Somerville, overtaken and defeated in an attempt to compromise by false appearances the reputation of Mary Westervelt, either that he might force her to marry him or gain a firmer hold than ever on the unhappy family, threatens Mrs. Westervelt, before all her family and guests and those who would force him ignominiously from the house, with an exposure of her crime. Then Somerville leaves them for a time, and Mrs. Westervelt writes a full confession of her wrong and its entailed misery and disgrace. Delirium follows her confession, and having in some way managed to lure Somerville on with a promise to elope with him, she climbs from her sick-room when Somerville comes for her, and when he would receive her in his arms she stabs him to death, and rushes to the river where she drowns herself.
The story, revolting as it may seem in such bare detail, is managed with great skill and delicacy, and its dramatic situations are relieved by much that is brilliant and amusing. Mary and Genevieve Westervelt are attractive characters, sufficiently individualized and evolved for the action required of them, — Mary very lovely, Genevieve very clever and fascinating, with the fresh personal graces and naïve philosophies of seventeen. They are set off admirably by Mrs. Van Leer, the character, we think, of the novel ; she is the natural, beguiling woman of superficial society, full of health, spirits, audacity, and a certain high animal beauty ; her coquettish wiles bewitching, if not misleading; a virtuous Vivien suggesting wrong, yet restrained from it by a something more amiable than fear ; flirting with Somerville and with Fitz Hugh, yet never looked upon with any jealousy by her large, thick-headed, kind-hearted Bœotian husband, Henry Van Lėer.
To the anxious eyes of Fitz Hugh, who has discovered through an accident that it is Mary Westervelt whom he loves, the mystery of Sea Cliff changes from Mr. and Mrs. Westervelt to Somerville and Genevieve, then to Somerville and Mrs. Van Leer, to transfer itself to Somerville and Mary, before it is cleared up by the final tragedy. Through all this the sisters are learning to fear Somerville and suspect him more and more of some wicked power over their step-mother. These complications are admirably used by the author. The issue of the events subjecting Genevieve to Fitz Hugh’s anxious suspicions brings Mrs. Van Leer to suspect Fitz Hugh of trifling with her “little cousin Genevieve.” The scene gives such a picture of Mrs. Van Leer that we must quote it: “ Before we could turn, Mrs.
Van Leer bounded upon us, holding up her dress to a very unnecessary altitude as she crossed the flowerbeds. She laughed outrageously at first, and then shook her little fist in my face with simulated anger. She caught my arm and dragged me away, hurrying me, chattering all the way, down the shrubbiest walks of the garden, and stopped in a grape arbor where we were concealed, alike from the house and from our late companions. ‘ Now tell me all about it,’ said she ; ‘confess the whole extent of your wickedness.’ ‘ There is nothing to confess, ma’am. I am innocent as these hollyhocks.’ ‘ What a veg-etable you are ! What little innocent po-sy ! But now tell me, did you flirt ve-ry badly ? Why did n’t you take one of your age ? Why did n’t you take me, for exam-ple ? ’ ”
Fitz Hugh denies any flirtation, and the dialogue proceeds until Mrs. Van Leer says : “ ‘ Now do confess. Well, I must buy your secret of you, then. Now, don’t be too hard upon me.’ She had kept hold of my arm all the while, and she now leaned upon it heavily, while her manner became still more frolicsome and coquettish. It was as I had repeatedly seen her try to allure Somerville ; and I half forgot my previous embarrassment in this new one, which was ridiculously perplexing, ‘Come,’ she continued, ‘I would do won-ders to persuade you to confess.’ She brought up her right hand, joined it to her left, and clasped both together over my arm.”
The dialogue goes on brightly. A change from the first topic leads Mrs. Van Leer to say, “‘Don't you believe that the strong-minded women are right ? Don't you think that we ought to stand upon a level with men?’
“ ‘ Of course. Why don’t you ? Why did n’t you grow six feet high, as I did ? What made you stop just when your head had got up to my shoulder ? ’
“‘Is my head just up to your shoulder ? ’ she replied. ‘ Really, I think it must be higher. Let us measure.’ She laid her head against the shoulder in question, raised it again, gave me a glance of provoking coquettishness, and sighed. ‘How hum-bling!’ she said, ‘ I admit my littleness. Please go on, what about the strong-minded women ?’
“ ‘ O you veteran, seasoned, reckless flirt ! ’ I thought. ‘ I wish your Potiphar was here to make you let go of me.’
“My voice was getting quite husky with embarrassment, but clearing it with a hem (which made her laugh), I launched desperately into my subject. ‘A strong-minded — ha—woman, indeed ! I don’t believe they are serious
in their professions. If they are, why not begin at the bottom and set things right in the animal kingdom first ? Why don't they get up a charitable society for sewing manes on the lionesses, and giving the peahens as splendid tails as the peacocks? ’
“ Perhaps we don’t want to meddle with the dirty birds and beasts,’interrupted my companion.
“ ‘ If they could only induce the male parrot not to wear finer feathers than the female, and persuade the cock not to crow louder or fight better than the pullet, we might be shamed into the modest example set us by our inferiors. We should reduce our stature to five feet two, speak treble, and be afraid of thunder.’
“ ‘ O, disgust-ing ! ’ said she. ‘I would n’t have such a man about me.’
“ ‘ Exactly. Now don’t you see, Mrs. Delilah, how absurd it is in you to want to cut off the strength-bearing locks of Samson ? ’
“ ‘ Ah, but this Mrs. Delilah does n’t want to cut them off. The most is a wish to have just such locks herself.’
“‘ Well, raise them, but then be contented ; don’t expect us to admire you then for the delicate curls of womanliness that you have thrown away. Now would n’t you much rather have a husband ? ’
“‘To be sure I would, or a beau, either,’ she replied, bending her head as if in laughter, so as to let her braids sweep my shoulder. Driven to recklessness, I turned upon the indiscreet yet really cold-blooded creature, and uttered certain remarks, perfectly proper I maintain in themselves, but odious to the average sense of propriety on this side of the Atlantic, — the true sphere of woman, — the pains and glories of maternity; and I expressed myself in the plainest English. I discovered that the most heedless of hoydens may be a prude, just as the most boisterous of bullies may be a coward. Mrs. Van Leer took off one hand from my arm, then the other, and finally stood a full yard away from me, although she laughed heartily.”
We have hinted in a not confident way of a soupçon of Balzac in the ante bellum DeForest; but it might be said with more justice to our author’s genius that New England for the whole year of a novel is too dull and bleak for its temperament, and he must give some season of his romance to a clime nearer the tropics. Sea Cliff is a book that its publishers should not suffer to be out of print, though it was written fourteen years ago, and its author can do better things to-day.
In his first novel after the war — Miss Ravenel’s Conversion from Secession to Loyalty — we have an interesting story narrated naturally, without straining or sensation, and without drags of dulness or flights of inflation, whilst the characters, recognized by every-day experience, are faithfully drawn, warmly colored, and always filled with life. There is no subtle psychology ; at least our author does not study that science with his characters and us before him, as many do, but proves his knowledge of it. so far as it is necessary, by the growth of his creatures and the acts of their lives. But above all, we find American feeling and thought and history as the war expressed them, viewed too from different sides, concisely impressing us. It is an harmonious novel, the very air of character and representation true to the accompaniment of time and events. Moreover, there is a salubrious satire, a presentation of ourselves as others see us, freshening every page of the story. Mr. Colburne, a young lawyer of New Boston — we take the liberty of translating it New Haven — meets in his native city some time in 1861 a Miss Ravenel of New Orleans, a vivid secessionist, who has been forced to leave home with her father, a professor in the Medical College of New Orleans, because of his position as a Unionist. The Professor, we are told, is a Southern-born man, but, except in warmth of heart and suavity of manners, he reasons, feels, and acts as the truest Yankee ; seeing the faults of his alleged people with the utmost severity, and exposing them with scathing frankness. So, although such an exception is possible, his construction weakens the book a bit, we think. Miss Ravenel at that time is merely a very pretty, bright, well-bred girl, but we imagine the possibilities of a lovely womanly character, such as is evolved by the events of her romance. She is devoted to her father, but is a ready champion of her South. Early in Colburne’s acquaintance with the Ravenels, Lieutenant-Colonel Carter appears on the New Haven scene. He is a Virginian, of the F. F. V’s. on his father’s side, a West - Pointer, with several years’ service, years ago, in the regular army, but now holding a volunteer commission from the Governor of Barataria (Connecticut), his mother’s native State. He is in New Haven on sick leave, but busy seeking to induce the Governor to inaugurate a militia system like that of Prussia, etc., etc. The Colonel has given up his father’s State, because, having been educated a United States soldier and a follower of Scott, he is a disbeliever in the State right of secession. The tie of birth was not the only one to have held him to the South. “ He had married a wife and certain appertaining human property in Louisiana ; and although he had buried the first, and dissolved the second (as Cleopatra did her pearls) in the winecup, it was reasonable to suppose that they had exercised an establishing influence on his character ; for what Yankee even was ever known to remain an Abolitionist after having once tasted the pleasure of living by the labor of others ? ” Moreover, the high powers of the secession movement, knowing Carter’s courage and professional ability, had sought to seduce him into treason by earnest persuasions and flattering blandishments, but had failed. Confidently and cheerfully he elects to fight for his old flag and his whole country. Yet this cavalier, what was he ? This cultivated soldier and man of high birth, how did he live ? A regular wine-bibber, though seldom drunk, a gambler occasionally for amusement, an adulterer — yet—yet, a man of tender heart, of generous impulses, of scrupulous professional or, say, conventional honor, susceptible of reverence for purity and righteousness, an undaunted soldier, passionate for the honor of the service, bitterly hating cowards, who long Struggles against demeaning himself by bowing down to corrupt politicians for professional promotion. Now this Colonel Carter, the personage of the novel, certainly, and one of the most symmetrically modelled we think of all Mr. DeForest’s creations, we try to present in a few words, whilst it takes, as it should, the whole story to adjust in one figure the contradictions of his nature ; to reprobate the school he is of and his evil career, yet make us feel a brotherly tenderness for him whilst his errors harm only himself; to follow him with hopes of his regeneration under the sweet governance, which for a period promises much ; to make us despise him when he injures the pure woman who entirely loves him, never suspecting his wickedness ; and to make us pity him when he dies a gallant soldier, though the brute had long ago won the victory over the man. Admirably complete, we say, is Mr. DeForest’s portrayal of this character,— the type of that brilliant, dangerous class, not more common, though perhaps more conspicuous, in America than in other countries, — that class of the splendid fellow ! This one is unmistakably American, peculiarly individualized by birth, by his time and his associations.
Whilst we see for a short time the quizzical side of New Haven, — the square, trim houses, the stiff, careful taste, the timid hospitality, the strong sympathy with right, the enthusiasm in matters of conscience, the cliques, the top crust of president and professors, the maiden belles of thirty and more, and the beaux of college boys, etc., etc.,— Mr. Colburne falls in love with Miss Ravenel, and Colonel Carter begins seriously to admire that young lady, who, besides looking somewhat like his late wife, “ had a charming mixture of girlish frankness and of the thorough-bred society air which he considered indispensable to a lady.” Then came Bull Run, the wounding of the Colonel, the raising of his new regiment in New Haven, and Colburne’s appointment as captain under Carter. The regiment goes to New Orleans, having, after a couple of months at Ship Island, followed the track of the great Farragut. In the summer succeeding General Butler’s recovery of New Orleans, Professor Ravenel obtains a permit from the government to return to his Southern home, and on a certain scorching day in June knocks at the door of a house assigned to Captain Colburne as his quarters, —an elegantly furnished little house which had once belonged to a gentleman now a captain in the Rebel service. Colburne is out, but the door is opened by his second lieutenant, and we, with Professor Ravenel, are introduced to Lieutenant Cornelius Van Zandt of Company I, Tenth Regiment Barataria Volunteers, “ of an old Knickerbocker family, one of the aboriginal Peter Stuyvesant Knickerbockers at your service, sir,” a dark-visaged, Heenan-sbaped man, with the ringing bass voice of a Susini, and with an elaborate, boisterous,ostentatious courtesy of manner, which puzzled the Doctor, “ who could not decide whether he was a bornand-bred gentleman or a professional gambler.” This reprobate son of a very respectable New York family, as we soon learn from Captain Colburne’s conversation with the Doctor, “ is a very valuable officer, though when drunk, not an uncommon event, the drunkest man since the discovery of alcohol. He is n't drunk to-day. He has not had above two quarts of sherry this morning. I let him have that to keep him from swallowing camphene.” This Van Zandt is a good specimen of DeForest’s many briefly and boldly drawn side characters with a necessary rôle to play whilst they make color in certain situations and set off the prominent actors. The interview between the simple-minded Doctor and Lieutenant Van Zandt, before the Captain enters, is capital. The amusingly wicked, hilarious, dashing lieutenant is admirably contrasted with the good, old-fashioned man of science. We beg our readers to turn to this scene and conversation. There is the liveliest action and most mischievous wittiness in it, and the dialogue and situations are in the author’s most sparkling mood ; — reckless, vinous Van Zandt pouring down the choicest wine of the Soulé cellar and pouring out on the innocent old professor a stream of revelation that shocks and perplexes his simple moral sense.
Coarse, the reader may think, as he reads that chapter, — a coarse study. True, but necessary to show the New Orleans and army scene. There is no coarse impression, result, or example. It is but one of the true shadows needed in the painting, the effect of which is wholesome and pure. Mr. DeForest is too honest to shirk the truth, from conventional delicacy.
But we must not dwell on the details of our Miss Ravenel’s story, though there are many points to keep us. Miss Ravenel finds her home and old friends much changed. Half had disappeared, and the other half had turned to enemies. “ She was to be cut in the street, to be glared at in church, to be sneered at in the parlor, to be put on the defensive, to be obliged to fight for herself and her father. Her temper rose at the thought of such undeserved hardness, and she felt that if it continued long she should turn loyal for very spite.” It is the beginning of the end.
All through these New Orleans experiences we get a most vivid knowledge of Rebel feeling, Rebel sufferings, Rebel schemings ; we know the very heart and features of that people in their desperate strait. No newspaper correspondence ever approached the truth and force of this novel in rendering of that time in that locality. The author sees artistically and yet with judicial eye ; not as an actor and a partisan, but with a fairness and consideration brightened with healthiest humor. The government of Butler we learn to see in many lights; the politics brought from Washington, to harm the army and help unarmed foes of our country, we note with disgust.
In New Orleans, Mrs. Larue, Miss Ravenel’s aunt, the captivating snake of the story, comes on the stage, — a Becky Sharpe with more grace and more tenderness ; an admirable combination of lovely woman and wily Satan. Finally, she makes Colonel Carter the victim and partner of her wickedness just when we begin to have hope of, and pride in, the devoted husband of our Lillie Ravenel, who, we almost believe, is planting a clean, strong soul in that soldierly body. But in the early New Orleans days when we first know Mrs. Larue, the modest, duty-doing, self-sacrificing, noble-principled gentleman, our citizen-soldier Colburne, loves, as he ever does, Lillie Ravenel, though she suspects it not ; whilst the brilliant Colonel, whose badness her purity cannot see, lays impassioned siege to her heart. His desperate love for our heroine is so seen by the reader in the beauty reflected from the object loved that one feels a sympathy and forgiveness for him who, on the field of battle, is always a gallant warrior. Of course this conflict of emotions in us is evidence of the author’s power.
Ordered suddenly to act the most dangerous part in the Lafourche expedition under General Weitzel, Carter, before he goes to the battle, offers himself to Lillie, and is accepted. Here the author finely represents the struggle of the old Doctor between his hatred of that class of men of which he believed and feared the Colonel to be one, and his love for his daughter. And here and hereafter we see Colburne patiently bearing his disappointment with a magnanimity which takes more thought of Lillie’s great danger than of his own terrible loss.
Colonel Carter and Lillie Ravenel are married, and the Professor, appointed by General Butler to commence an organization of Southern labor, selects a plantation and obtains blacks. Lillie accompanies her father to his new home on the Mississippi, whilst her husband is in the field. Captain Colburne, too, marches and fights with great credit, and gets severelywounded at Port Hudson. His adventures and Colonel Carter’s, the acts of the iron-nerved, dashing Van Zandt, always full of whiskey, and the cowardice of a certain political major named Gazaway are parts of a graphic panorama of the Southwestern campaign.
Observing merely that the interest of the story never flags, and, even when intense, never arises from a forced or improbable situation, we quote here two scenes from among many others equally good. In the first, Carter, having gone North on certain duty, meets on the cars between New York and Washington the Governor of Barataria, — the State Governor who commissioned him, — and the lieutenant-colonelcy in the Tenth being vacant, the Colonel asks the Governor to give it to Colburne.
“‘But I have promised that to Mr. Gazaway,’ said the Governor, looking slightly troubled.
“ ‘ To Gazaway ! ’ roared Carter in wrathful astonishment. ‘ What ! to the same Gazaway ? Why, Governor, are you aware — are you perfectly aware why he left the regiment ?’
“ The Governor’s countenance became still more troubled, but did not lose its habitual expression of mild obstinacy.
“ ‘ I know — I know,’ he said softly. ‘ It is a very miserable affair.’
“ ‘ Miserable ! I never heard of anything so utterly contemptible. Certainly you did not think of letting this infernal poltroon back into the regiment ? ’ Then Carter tells the sickening story of Gazaway’s disgraceful cowardice, to which the Governor listened, knowing it all before; and Carter concludes, ‘ And you propose to restore him ! ’
“ The Governor sighed, and looked very sad, but still as meekly determined as Moses. He replied that he knew it all, but must act out our American principle, the greatest good of the greatest number. Gazaway was not to keep the commission. ‘ It is merely given to whitewash him. He will accept it and resign,’
“ ‘ But what the —— do you want to whitewash him for ? He ought to be gibbeted ! ’
“ The Governor, rather crushed, then explains the political necessity. How ‘ we must give the administration a clear majority in both houses ; and as Gazaway’s Congressional district is a close one, we must whitewash him, because we fear his assistance is necessary to gain it.”
“ ‘ My God ! what a disgraceful muddle ! The way to carry elections is to whip the Rebels ! to have the best officers and the best army, and win all the victories. My God ! ’ was Carter’s indignant comment.
“The Governor assures Carter that he is sacrificing his own feelings, that it is a most painful step, etc.
“‘ I would n't take the step,’ returned the Colonel. ‘ I’d let the elections go to hell before I ’d take it.’ ”
After further conversation in the same way. Carter cannot stand it, but jumps up suddenly. “‘Excuse me if I leave you for half an hour,’ observed Carter, without attempting to conceal his disgust. ‘ I want to step into the smoking-car and take a cigar.’
“ ‘ Certainly,’ bowed tranquilly the Governor. He was used to such unpleasant interviews.
“‘ Horrible shame, by Jove ! ’ Carter muttered, chewing rather than smoking his cigar. ‘ I wish the whole thing was in the hands of the War Department. Damn the States and their rights ! ’
“ Each of these men was a wonder to the other; each of them should have been a wonder to himself. The Governor knew that Carter was a roué, a hard drinker, something of a Dugald Dalgetty ; and he could not understand his professional chivalry, his passion for the honor of the service, his hatred for cowards. The Colonel knew the Governor’s upright moral character as an individual, and was amazed that he could condescend to what he considered dirty trickery. In one respect Carter had the highest moral standpoint. He did wrong to please himself, but under the pressure of overwhelming impulse, and he paid for it in frank remorse. The other did wrong after calm deliberation, sadly regretting the necessity, but chloroforming his conscience with the plea of the necessity. A well-intentioned man, blinded by long confinement in the dark labyrinths of political intrigue. He would have shrunk with horror from Carter, had he known of that affair with Madame Larue. At the same time he would commission a known coward above the heads of heroes, to carry a Congressional district,” etc.
The other scene we shall quote occurs after Carter’s fall, and subjection to Mrs. Larue, unknown and unsuspected as yet by his wife, when Lillie, reaching “ the apotheosis of womanhood,” Carter is summoned to her chamber.
“ The very expansion of Lillie at sight of him, the eagerness with which her soul reached out to him for help, pity, love, was perilous. As for him, he had never before witnessed a scene like this, and he never forgot it.”
Later, when the baby is a week or more old, and the visions of fever vanish, “ she beckoned her husband to her, and with tears begged his pardon for some longsince-forgotten petulance. This was the hardest trial that Carter had yet undergone. To have her plead for his forgiveness was a reproach that he could hardly bear with self-possession. He must not confess, — no such relief was there for his burdened spirit,— but he sank on his knees in miserable penitence.
“ ‘ Oh ! forgive me,’ he said, ‘ I am not half good enough for you. I am not worthy of your love. You must pray for me, my darling ! ’
“ For the time she was his religion, his loving, chastening, though not allseeing deity; uplifting and purifying him, even as she was exalted and sanctified by her child. . . . .
“ He washed her face, took her meals in and put them out, fed her with his own hands, fanned her by the hour, and all, she thought, as no one else could.
“ ‘ How gentle you are ! ’ site said, her eyes suddenly moistening with gratitude. ‘ How nicely you wait on me ! And to think that you have led a storming party! And I have seen men afraid of you ! My dear, what did you ever mean by saying that you are not good enough for me ? You are a hundred times better than I deserve ! ’
“ Carter laid his forehead in her gently clasping hands, without speaking.”
Lillie, learning of her husband’s baseness, in a manner which establishes it beyond slightest hope of excuse, whilst he is in the field and just before his death, gives him up forever and returns to the North with her father. Her agony we are brought to know and to sympathize with, though it is not spoken or acted on the open stage of the book.
Ordinarily we readers find an injustice done both us and an author’s creations when the man or woman who has won our hopes and affections is allowed to enjoy her or his reward only after some unworthy one has possessed it first. But with so much art does Mr. DeForest portray Lillie’s heart and life, so nobly metamorphosed is Colonel Carter by her presence and in that love, that the thought of her former marriage does not trouble our joy when Colburne, the true hero of the tale, is at length united to Lillie Ravenel.
Though this novel of Miss Ravenel’s Conversion may be far less known than Overland or Kate Beaumont, yet to a careful reader of Mr. DeForest, many reasons will appear why we give longer consideration to it, and make it somewhat an exponent of his achievement and of his promise.
We wish there were space here to do justice to Overland. In interest it surpasses any of his other books ; yet we class it as a story rather than a novel, if tins distinction of titles is legitimate and explanatory. It displays in the highest degree the author’s great ability in description, proves how industriously he studies his work and then how faithfully and energetically he handles his materials, and it exhibits freshness and fervency of style. It is witty and humorous, abounds in the most thrilling situations, and brings together in the minor characters some of his most striking and original conceptions, as Texas Smith and Captain Glover for antipodal Americans, Sergeant Weber and Sweeny for our German and Irish admixture of nationalities, Coronado for Spanish color and heroic villany. But as a novel it falls short, because the dramatis personæ are used for the incidents and plot, instead of these latter proceeding from, being evolved by, the former. Mr. DeForest himself corroborates the exception we have taken, when, more than two thirds through the story, he writes :
“ We have had hitherto little more than a superficial view of the characters of our people. Events, incidents, adventures, and even landscapes have been the leading personages of the story, and have been to its human individualities what the Olympian gods are to Greek and Trojan heroes in the Iliad. Just as Jove or Neptune rules or thwarts Agamemnon and Achilles, so the monstrous circumstances of the desert have overborne, dwarfed a-nd blurred these travellers.” Yet Overland has magnificent points, such as that prose poem, sustained through six chapters, of the doomed voyage of Thurstane and his two companions down the terrible San Juan, through its prison cañon, and the awfulness of the Great Cañon of the mysterious Colorado ; and that picture, in another place, of tottering beasts, savagepainted Apaches, United States soldiers, Mexican teamsters, and civilized women—absorbed by a thirst which was more burning than the rage of the pursuers or the panic of the pursued, all plunging together into a desert stream, and drinking for life.
In the novel of Kate Beaumont, the most prominent, the most popular, and probably the best of Mr. De Forest’s works, we have the feud between two South Carolina families with a heap of honor-slain victims on either side, sadly hindering the course of true love. So much for the plot in brief. The lovers merely draw the thread of the story through the book : that is their prominence; the other persons of the cast receive the strength of the author’s characterization.
Kate Beaumont is a wonderfully entertaining and honest (without any malice or grudge behind it) satire of a certain class and of a certain sentiment in the South. DeForest wished to picture one scene of Southern life, striking, picturesque, and of the latitude, — as the painter might take a piece of the Dismal Swamp with its contrasts of gloom and brilliancy, its cypresses, mosses, and bits of plumage, all intensified perhaps by the lurid glow of a setting sun slanting through gnome-shaped vistas and reddening the skv above. It is only one piece of Southern scenery the artist in either case has chosen. There are mountains, plains, light, life, activity elsewhere and constantly in the Southern country ; but this bit is, as it were, of its inner self, and is peculiar, because seen only in that clime, and because, though limited and remote, it seems somehow to satisfy our ideal knowledge of the landscape. The painter selects this piece of nature, of which he can make the best work of art; so our novelist has chosen that phase of Southern life and character which, copying truly, he could use most artistically. This we note in justice to the South, of which many of us are as yet somewhat wilfully ignorant, and in justice, too, to the truthfulness as well as to the art of the author. Let Southern readers, too, consider with satisfaction how faithfully this novelist presents the noble, beautiful soul, Colonel Kershaw, the patient, chivalrous Frank McAllister, the courteous, sweet-hearted Major Lawson, and our dear Kate Beaumont, all as peculiarly the product of the section of civilization dramatized, as are the loud, fighting, drinking Hon. Peyton Beaumont, Randolph Armitage, Tom Beaumont, and the poor rough cracker, Redhead Saxon. We have before alluded to this thorough conscientiousness of Mr. De Forest’s judgment and performance ; how he never swerves from duty to truth and reality; how, whilst he contemns brutalities and lawlessnesses, makes the duello horrible and its code ridiculous, and strikes heavy and sharp at whatever is barbarous,— he yet leads us to admire with him the everready personal courage, the high dealing, the frank speaking, the ease, the affluence, the polished manners, and all else that is captivating in the society he pictures. He has a strange will and power to turn every side of a figure to our gaze. In Peyton Beaumont, the most industriously wrought character of the novel, how careful he is. when he has made us hate his habitual intemperance, his savage pride, and his “intense pugnacity, as fiery as powder and as long-winded as death,” to show us his kindness to his dependants, his passionate love for his children, his profound regard for truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, his imaginative (if that only) reverence for religion. This Colonel Beaumont, whom we fear and reprobate, whose character and career greatly win our interest and even affection (if you understand such a feeling as holding place alongside of reprobation), who is both fond and fierce, rough yet gentle, is an original character in literature, yet such an one as we have often met and known on the Southern seaboard before the war. It was one to mature itself only in that latitude, and under the institution of slavery ; one perfectly probable in the scene, if not in this case a reality.
We regret that the limits of this article, added to the fact that Kate Beaumont has been printed in these pages, forbid us to quote two portions of the novel, each establishing the greatness and extent of DeForest’s literary powers, and complementing each other in characterization of personages and realization of the incidents. We beg the reader to do our author the justice to read the ninth chapter of Kate Beaumont, and then the thirty-second chapter. At one view we get a sweep of scenery in which to estimate Mr. DeForest’s range and performance ; and we must applaud both the striking foreground of action and the fine background of charitable knowledge and intent. Where have we any such humorous and faithful representation of the relation between master and slave ? or a better reproduction of the wit, tact, and fond familiarity of the Southern house-servant ? or such a picture of South Carolina plantation housekeeping and the domestic life ? or a clearer view of family sentiment and unity so little known in other parts of our country ? And in the last chapter referred to, how dramatic, how pathetic is the strain of feeling, and how exalted is the morality!
In all Mr. DeForest has written since the war, we discern breadth, strength, and movement, wonderful honesty, freedom from prejudice, no affectation, very little exaggeration, and an entire absence of sentimentality. We find, too, great power of accurate and elevated description. His power lies not in delineation of very fine natures, not in delicate shading or genre painting, but in bold, true outlines, full of life and suggestion. He is not a painter of delicious colors and complexions, but a draughtsman of form and action ; or be is a fresco-artist doing boldly on large surfaces histories of average humanity, — strong, legitimate effects to be enjoyed en entier and not close-scanned with half-shut eyes ; good, wholesome, artistic effects, without cramped, elaborate, or laborious minutiæ. His plane is that broad, difficult one trodden by average humanity ; those brothers and sisters with whom most of us trudge along, and whose portraits, from long acquaintance with the originals, we can declare to be true and artistic.
Clarence Gordon.