THE NEW ANTIGONE.

REVIEWS.

This is a remarkable novel—remarkable in conception, in construction, for the exquisite grace and polish of its style. It is a book which is bound to be widely read, keenly criticised, condemned by many, and probably will be wholly satisfactory to no one. The great problems of social and political life which are at the present moment agitating society in the old world and the new are attacked with unmistakable art, and in some respects with great power : few will be inclined to admit that they are satisfactorily solved. The author is unknown; there is not even a nom-de-plume on the title page ; but from internal evidence we are inclined to think that the work is the production of a very clever and highly-cultured woman. There is a semblance of strict logic in many of the arguments which might be taken as the work of a masculine mind, but the highly-wrought emotional portions of the book could only, we think, have been written by a woman. Be this as it may, the fearless and yet entirely delicate manner in which such a perilous subject as free-love is attacked, and the powerful manner in which many phases of extreme socialism is discussed reveal an author of no ordinary character. There is probably one conspicuous weakness in the workmanship of the book. The author has studied men and women more than nature.
The varying moods of the feminine and masculine mind are limned with a deft and skilful hand, but when an attempt is made to describe the varying moods of nature—the sea, a landscape, a forest, the play of light and shade on hill and dale, there is a lack of the sympathetic touch. We cannot help thinking that were the author to seek inspiration from the earth, the sea, and sky, to listen to the voices of the brooks, the growing grass, the swaying trees, of the plashing or long breaking of the waves, he or she would be able to approach the problems of life with a more unerring instinct, and to reach the goal of the higher life with surer footsteps.
It is difficult to say which is the hero of the book—Ivor Mardol, Colonel Valence, Rupert Glanville all stand out in bold relief. But Rupert Glanville is probably the central figure. He is an artist of imaginative genius and great technical skill, and the story opens at Trelingham Court, where he has gone to paint a series of frescoes in the great hall. Throughout the book there are many dis- courses on art and the higher function of painting and sculpture. The subject of the frescoes is the Arthurian legends, and with considerable ingenuity the writer attempts to show that Tennyson has not caught the true spirit of these legends. But much of the talk regarding the ideals of art is mystical, and while the style is always enchanting, one feels as if the end of it all would be to be lost in a vague cloudland—divorced from the actualities of life. At Trelingham Court Glanville meets Lady May Davenant, and the sympathy between the two in literature, art, and aspiration begets a feeling which suggests the tender passion But Glanville, while taking a walk in the grounds, encounters the genuine heroine — Hippolyta Valence. She is exceedingly beautiful, the daughter of Colonel Valence, who has a small place near Trelingham Court. Colonel Valence had been a student at Oxford where, failing to find a haven of rest for his troubled soul either in the arms of evangelicals or the bosom of the church, he is drawn to scepticism. Embarking on the stormy sea of politics, more especially in relation to the social life of the people, he sees no hope for the regeneration of the masses but through revolution and anarchy. He becomes a member of all the revolutionary societies on the Continent, fights for the revolution in Spain,Italy, Germany, France. He attains the position of leading Anarchist of Europe; is in sympathy and association with the Nihilists in Russia, the Socialists, in Germany, the Republicans in Spain, the Communists in France, the Irreconcilables in Italy. Yet there is some thing noble in his character. Thoroughly unselfish, penetrated only with the deepest love of humanity, he scruples in no crime which will, as he believes, upset tyrannies and destroy tyrants. There are such men who would coolly plan murder—if the victim be only what they conceive a tyrant—and yet are consumed by a passion of pity, it desire to help the poor, the downcast, the feeble, the wretched, simply because they are human beings. We are introduced in the course of the story to various types of Anarchists. With the dagger and dynamite type—men ferocious, dirty, inspired by unreasoning hate, working for the most part underground, yet capable of the deliberate sacrifice of liberty or life for their wild ideas—we are familiar in other fiction. Here this class are designated Spartans. To another type we are introduced—the "Athenian" branch of the great revolutionary band which would subvert society in order that a new and more beautiful order might emerge out of chaos. The meetings of the Athenians are held in the palace of a duke, and here is a description of a meeting of the aristocratic "Cave" of Anarchists:—

"They were shown into a smaller room fitted up as a salon in the style of Louis XV., where they found the Duke awaiting his guests. It was, Ivor said in the carriage, to be a bachelors' party. Rupert was introduced by his engraver friend, whom the Duke lightly rallied for having deserted the Cave so many months together. Ivor Mardol replied that business had taken him abroad for one thing, and that principle had kept him at home for another. His Grace of Adullam smiled. He was a singularly prepossessing man, though not exactly handsome. But Rupert liked a human being to show some individual traits of character, even at the cost of a little beauty, and not to be eternally reminding one of that sad, unsatisfying Antinous. The Duke's figure was well proportioned and he seemed neither tall nor short, though he stood 6ft. in actual measurement. His motions were graceful as a panther's, his voice lingered in the memory; and the large dark eyes, flaming like a basilisk's, told, no less than the melancholy passionate mouth, of a spirit that suffered the reverse of the pain of Tantalus,—not the longing before satiety, but the despair which comes after it. Ivor, when the Duke moved away, turned to his friend and said, ' What do you think of him? I have invented a Shakspearean compound name for the kind; I call it "restless-drooping." ' The artist assented, but thought he would like to hear more of the voice that corresponded to the countenance and figure.

" He was not to be baulked. When the number of guests was full they went rather silently into the dining-room, which, was long and narrow, not unlike the picture-gallery at Trelingham, fitted up with a panelling of dark polished wood against which shone marble statues of exquisite loveliness. The lights were low and soft, except where they throw a blaze from above on the dinner table, and somewhere in the distance might be heard the sound of running water, a subdued ripple which seemed unconsciously to tone the conversation that ensued and fill up its pauses. Rupert was charmed and, he could not but allow, surprised. Not that he had imagined he was invited to a noisy rout; the Duke was well known for his extreme refinement, and had never mixed with the rabble which stands on the outskirts of the highest society as on those of the lowest. But he had looked for something different. Were the guests round him Anarchists ? He examined them one by one. There were sixteen at table counting the Duke, who, as Rupert was again astonished to observe, had seated Ivor in the place of distinction at his right hand, where he talked to him earnestly. The young man took his honours with unruffled mien and seemed entirely at his ease. There was now no shade of anxiety on his brow. Again Glanville marvelled that he should be so thorough an adept in dissimulation. Ivor, he said to himself, knew that he had taken Hippolyta from his friend, and that his friend knew it. And he was sitting with that friend at the same table as completely unmoved, as entirely master of himself, as though his loyalty had been unimpeached and unimpeachable ! What a vile masquerade was life and friendship !

" His thoughts reverted to the others. Were they indeed patrons or partisans of anarchy ? The table at which they were met was a duke's; the wines, the viands, the flowers that bloomed around them, were such in their kind rare and exquisite. Life in these climates had nothing more perfect to show on its material side , the senses were gratified to their highest, and every crumpled rose-leaf that could trouble their enjoyment was swept away. He noted the conversation. It was clever and ingenious, but at times something too searched-out—he found himself saying with Holofernes 'too peregrinate'—to bear the stamp of unpremeditated gaiety. Nor was it exactly gay. It was high pitched and then languorous, abounding in prose which apparently exhausted the resources of impassioned verse, vet could not express its meaning to the speaker's satisfaction. Some of the guests were gentle almost to effeminacy, and their out of-the way learning contrasted singularly with the mincing tender tones in which they gave utterance to it. Two or three past the first years of old age were, on the other hand, grave, sententious, and majestic. Wearing the Florentine lucco instead of the black dress coat and waistcoat, they might have come straight from the Purgatorio of Dante, with their earnest gestures and slow sonorous voices. These were not all English, like the young wild-haired—and perhaps, in spite of their seriousness, hare-brained—dilettanti whom Rupert recognised as of the class which is perpetually discoursing of poems and pictures, though incapable of creating either. What struck him in all the talk was its chaotic nature. Not only did every man appear to have different patterns of heaven, earth, and hell from those which his neighbour carried, but the number of discordant patterns in each sample-book was without end. These strange guests, who did not mention or call each other by their names, had read everything, seen everything, and travelled everywhere. They had opened Pandora's box and rifled it of its contents, but not one of them had found Hope at the bottom. He could not but allow that they were erudite, refined, polished to excess; but the refinement seemed to have undone the work of travel and experience; it had taken the life out of these men and extinguished in them the last spark of spontaneity. Art had overcome Nature; the fine-spun inner clothing had completely wrapped up and overlaid that fine-spun inner flesh that we call temperament and genius. There could be no passion where there was no fire ; but the curious fact remained that in every sentence enough passion was breathed forth to outdo Cleopatra and Sappho. Rupert laughed inwardly when he perceived that he could remember only the names of women to match those simulacra of men.

"Yes, they were Anarchists surely. They denied, doubted, disparaged ; they had nothing but refined scorn for all that makes life worth living. They called nothing into existence ; they satirised everything that was not sensuous feeling, that did not feed delightful moments. Glanville had long detested morbidezza in painting; he saw it here, and hated it in literature and life. The deity worshipped by this company was the wingless earthly love which turns life into a frenzied lyrical chant, and steeps the senses in earth born perfumes. In like manner the high thoughts which for him made the literature of the world an inspired heroic Bible, sank down here to the wine-crowned parables of Hafiz. Had he come by mistake into a Paradise of sensuous delights instead of the ambrosial supper for which Ivor had prepared him?"

But it was not among the Athenians that Hippolyta had been brought up; it was among the more respectable of the Freethinkers and Anarchists of the Spartan group. She know nothing of religion and had only a contempt for the conventionalities, yet she had grown into beautiful pure womanhood—modest, refined, highly educated, and especially trained to philosophic discussion. It is with this girl that Rupert Glanville falls in love at first sight. Divided in duty between Lady May Davenant and Hippolyta, he eventually flees both and returns to his London studio. There one night Hippolyta, who had discovered her love for Rupert, arrives, to the infinite astonishment of the artist, and calmly announces that she is his, that, she has come to stay with him, and that for her the world " had ceased to be the world of lying conventions and foolish worn-out antiquities." Rupert with anguished heart implores her to so far conform to the ordinary usages of society as to go through the form of marriage, but her principles are relentless.

" Come Rupert, dear," she says, " let the soul of the artist within you burst those conventions, and float with me into a happier air. The old world is dying ; it is nearly dead. Cannot you hear the rattle in its throat ; these inarticulate gaspings of rites and ceremonies, the meaning of which was emptied away before you and I saw the light ? We are young ; we have learnt how much of what people say they believe, and only say it, is false to the heart's core. What concern have we with effete aristocracies, obsolete religions, childish betrothals, with ring and book in the sight of the profane multitude ? The infinite expanse of the future lies before us, the possibilities of to-morrow. It has taken many a brave life to win this fair inheritance—the poets, the dreamers, the wise men and women who have not dreamt merely, but have begun to realise what they dreamt. On which side will you take your stand—with the old tyrannical, foolish, helplessly cruel past, or with men like Ivor Mardol and Colonel Valence, with women like—yes, I dare to say it—like Hippolyta ? You do not know the consequences of one false step in a girl brought up as I have been to act and speak the perfect truth. Were I to do as you bid me, to go with you before priest or registrar, I should degrade myself beyond redemption. This, Rupert, is the woman's protest against the old bad order, her martyrdom if you will. It is for man to renounce honours, wealth, glory, the power which involves dominion over the weak, and is founded on their weakness. What can a maiden renounce ! I will tell you. Do not shrink if I say it, conscious of the unsullied life I have led and the innocent love that is beating in my heart. Rupert, she can renounce respectability."

Hippolyta prevails ; she beats down all Rupert's scruples, and they live as man and wife. The weakness of the position is apparent, and here is one of the evidences, as we take it, of feminine authorship. It does not occur to Hippolyta, and so far as argument is put into the protesting mouth of Rupert is concerned to the author, that for the two to pose as man and wife before the world is to surrender all the specious fallacies with which Hippolyta had defied convention. To be known as Mr. and Mrs. Malcolm to the world was as much a sacrifice to conventionalities as if they had submitted to be married by a priest before the altar of Hanover-square church. The awakening of Hippolyta's conscience to her real position is told with much dramatic power. She encounters a girl in her own neighbourhood who is seduced by a gentleman of position, and she exerts herself day and night to rescue the betrayed one, and to bring home the villainy to the betrayer. In the course of the search a vivid description is given of "slumming" in the east end of London. Thought, which is deeper than the passion of pity, is stirred in her own heart while she prosecutes her weary pursuit of the lost girl, and at last Hippolyta discovers the nakedness of her own spiritual condition. Attracted by the sensuous yet solemn music of a Roman Catholic chapel she enters and listens to one of those heart-searching sermons for which John Newman was famous. Indeed, we fancy we can hear an echo of Newman in the outline of the sermon by which all the emotional nature of Hippolyta is roused. Perhaps here we have more convincing evidence than in any other part of the book of its feminine authorship. Hippolyta has no conviction of sin through that reasoning or philosophic faculty which was her strong point. It is by the touchstone of highly wrought feeling that she sees all her cherished freethinking and free love standards shattered. Encouraged by the priest, instead of confessing to her lover that she has seen a new and a purer light, and atoning for the past by asking a genuine marriage which he has so passionately desired to grant, the poor distracted girl flees her home, leaving no clue behind, and enters a convent. Meanwhile, Glanville returns home to find his nest forsaken, and after a despairing search is attacked by a brain fever. On recovering his memory is an entire blank as to his relationship with Hippolyta ; he meets Lady May Davenant again and she marries him. In course of time Glanville accidentally stumbles on an old bundle of Hippolyta's letters ; memory wakes and new misery ensues. In a somewhat wonderful but, as one reads, apparently natural manner all the leading characters in the story meet in a remote Spanish convent, and a terrible tragedy disposes of Hippolyta and her brother. The intense power of the closing chapters of the book is as fine as anything in contemporary fiction. The character of Ivor Mardol or Valence is splendidly drawn. We have omitted all mention of it so as to concentrate attention on Hippolyta, and we commend "The New Antigone" as one of the most fascinating and powerful stories of the Victorian age.

"The New Antigone" : A Romance, London: Macmillan and Co. Brisbane: Watson, Ferguson, and Co.

Brisbane Courier (Qld. : 1864 - 1933), Saturday 2 June 1888, page 3

[See Rev. Dr. William Francis Barry entry in Wikipedia.]