Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 095.djvu/169

162 when offended, a queen,—when p,leased, a child. Lady Ormingten is amusing; but beside such portraits as Pelham's lady-mother, and that admirable woman of the world, Lady Frances Sheringham, in Hook’s "Parson’s Daughter," she is insipid and unsuccessful. We expected more of her, for her first appearance told well; and we anticipated an instructive acquaintanceship with one into whose dressing-room we were admitted by stealth—there beholding, on her ladyship's table, blue veins sealed up in one packet, and a rising blush corked up in a crystal phial, and a Pandora's box of eyebrows, eyelashes, lips, cheek, chin, ivory forehead, and a pearly row of teeth. Her existence was all Watteau—á vignette—all Pompadour — all powder-puff, all musk, all ambergris! Time need have had gold sand in his glass, and an agate handle to his scythe, to deal with such a life of trifling." Such the being who could be charming in company, when it was worth her while, but never played to empty benches; like the country manager who could not afford to give the snow-storm in his Christmas pantomime with white paper, when the audience was thin, she often "snowed brown," and was peevish and ungracious until further notice. Her husband. Lord Ormington, is of a class which no one can better describe than Mrs. Gore, but which she has described far better elsewhere: the sort of man one rarely sees out of England; reserved, without being contemplative; convivial, without being social; cold, unexpansive, undemonstrative; one who quarrelled with the Woods and Forests, because they would not mend the roads with the ruins of Fotheringay Castle,—and could perceive no irony in Hamlet's assignment of purpose to the ashes of imperial Cæsar. Lady Harriet Vandeleur is well done, so far as she goes; an Irishwoman, with a naïveté bordering on effrontery—pretty, pouting, piquante; coquette, jilt, flirt, angel; restless and artificial; her naïveté calculated, her impromptus faits à loisir, Thérèse is not a bad illustration of the spirituelle and sigh-away femme ineomprise, united to an Apollo Belvidere fed upon oil-cake, and weighing eighteen stone. And a due source of mirth is open in the history of the Frau Wilhelmina, with her carnivorous and other propensities. But it is on English subjects that Mrs. Gore best exhibits her skill.

The class of fiction to which "The Hamiltons" belongs, labours under the disadvantage of a promiscuous alliance of fact and fancy. Political life is the theme—the dates are accurately given—the Ministers and the Opposition have each their rôle; while, at the same time, historical accuracy is defied—the Duke of Wellington is not himself. Sir Robert Peel is neither here nor there, and all is confusion worse confounded. In "The Hamiltons" we have political portraits, belonging to the period of George IV.'s decease and the Reform Bill agitation; but the food on which we are invited to banquet is neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor good red herring. The actors are neither quite historical nor quite ideal; there is a quantum of reality about them, but it is not a quantum suff. If political novels we are to have at all, it is more satisfactory to have them in a more definite shape—with at least two or three veritable cabinet ministers, masqued or not, as you please, but recognisable, and in keeping with the blue books and morning papers of twenty years since. One can enjoy, for instance, Plumer Ward's presentment of Canning (as Wentworth) in "De Vere," or our novel Chancellor of the Exchequer's