LOTHAIR.[175]

LOTHAIR.[175]

Lothair is both a novel and a pamphlet. Two distinct currents of thought are apparent, running through the work, variously intertwined and blended, but from time to time asserting definite individuality. This phenomenon is explained by the two-fold character of the writer, who is a novelist and man of letters, and at the same time a man of the world and a statesman. The novel is written apparently to reassert his powers and demonstrate to the literary world that his genius is undimmed by age, perhaps also to indulge the exercise of a favorite and successful art, by which he has raised himself from an obscure position to one of influence and renown. The pamphlet is evidently intended for political effect; to throw discredit upon eminent persons, to disparage the value of conversions among the higher classes of society, and, through the thin veil of fiction, inflict all the damage possible upon the court of Rome and the Roman Catholic Church. It reveals the political character of its writer, his utter want of principle and consistency, and enables us to comprehend how he has overcome all the obstacles to his career, by great industry, acute intelligence, and absolute unscrupulousness in turning men and women, things and events, to his own personal advantage. As a novel it adds nothing to the established reputation of the author. It is rated at a high figure, commercially speaking, and will no doubt be a remunerative investment for its publishers.

It purports to be a picture of the habits, manners, and mode of life of people of the highest rank in England, with sketches of persons of diverse culture and foreign birth, to heighten the contrasts and bring out the lights and deepen the shadows. Natural scenery, stately dwellings, ancient trees, sunlight, flowers, music, and fresh air give life and animation to the varying scenes, and form the appropriate basis, background, and accompaniment for the living panorama. Lothair is a youth of pure blood and fair education, the heir of immense estates and a lofty title. He is good-looking, athletic, kind-hearted, shy, sensitive, and sentimental.

He has suffered the depression and discouragement of a sour Presbyterian system of education, from which he was happily rescued by the honest and determined efforts of one of his guardians, Cardinal Grandison.

He emerges just before he comes of age, and appears before us in the midst of an elegant family, in which, fortunately, all the daughters are married excepting one, who has great beauty and a remarkably fine voice. He immediately, as in duty bound, falls desperately in love, and in the most honorable manner possible confides the state of his feelings to the mother of the object of his affections, who is, by the way, a fine specimen of a thorough-bred English lady.

The mother wisely and tenderly counsels delay, and we would recommend her conduct in this interesting occasion to all the middle-aged ladies of our acquaintance when placed in a similar situation. Lothair accepts her decision, and in the mean time becomes more and more intimate with the cardinal, and forms the acquaintance of a Catholic family distantly connected, and becomes somewhat smitten with the real heroine of the tale, Clare Arundel. The objective point of the story now develops itself. A struggle for the rich and titled youth commences between the English Establishment and the Church. Political and mercenary motives are, with great impartiality, ascribed to both the contending powers. The combat between the rough and honest Scotch Presbyterian uncle and the accomplished and fascinating cardinal is wisely dropped.

No imagination could suggest the thought that one who had escaped from evangelicalism could ever return to it. It is, in the author's mind, simply a political squabble for the influence and vote of the future peer. His soul is of no account.

The conduct and development of this contest gives the right honorable romancer an opportunity to introduce the lords and ladies, the dukes and bishops, cardinals and monsignori, artists, wits, and men about town, with whom he delights to fill his pages. They all speak in character, and in the main with artistic consistency, and their conversation is certainly sprightly, often witty, sometimes wise, and never offensive on the score of taste and morality. It affords him the opportunity to flatter and praise, and at the same time exhibit a power of sarcasm and ridicule, the effective methods of his earlier writings, by which he climbed to his present position. He exhibits talents and a knowledge of life which would have made him equally successful in the role of banker, picture-merchant, diamond-broker, or even old clo'man. He gloats over the splendors which he describes; and beauty, rank, fashion, fine clothes, crystal, porcelain, pictures, jewels, "ropes of pearls," castles, palaces, parks, and gardens, are dwelt upon with the cherishing fondness of the gentlemen of keen eyes, hooked noses, and unctuous touch. Character, conduct, motives, principles, sentiments, affections, passions, and religion are mingled in admirable confusion, are estimated at the same value and weighed in the same balance.

There is for him as novelist or pamphleteer no principle but expediency, no rule of conduct but temporal advantage. He worships a golden calf. These be thy gods, O Israel! At a critical period, while our hero is wavering between his Anglican and Catholic mistress, and the cardinal is striving to acquire a wholesome influence over his somewhat unstable relative, while he is sailing on the summer sea of high life and elegant society, he goes to Oxford to see his horses. He has wisely left those useful animals at the university, while he is pursuing his studies of life and manners in London. At Oxford, he meets Colonel and Mrs. Campian, and is taken completely off his feet. Presbyterianism, Anglicanism, Corisande and Clare Arundel, the Establishment, and Catholicity disappear at once, and Madre Natura in the splendid physique of the divine Theodora, claims an unresisting captive and victim.

This is either an inspiration of a romancer's imagination or a study. If the latter, there is no hope for the right honorable author's salvation on the score of invincible ignorance.

Lothair basks in the splendor of Theodora's beauty, and surrenders his reason to the fascination of her false political principles. The lower or transient good is preferred to the higher, the permanent good. He chooses the lower, as did Lucifer and Adam, Judas and Luther, and multitudes have done and are doing. Naturally and artistically there is no way out of this scrape excepting through a catastrophe; religiously, excepting through penance. Theodora is the ideal of Greco-Roman heathenism, and the artist Phœbus is its high-priest. They are fine creations from an artistic point of view.

They enable the author to introduce some clever writing about art, and some speculations regarding the Aryan and Semitic races, evidently with the intention of associating revealed religion with the idea of superstition. The effect left upon the mind is something like that produced by a certain class of sermons which we read on Monday morning in the New-York Herald. The novelist is hurried on at this stage by the necessities of the pamphleteer. Political events succeed each other so rapidly that he was obliged to send Lothair as rapidly as possible to the field of battle (his heathen destiny) against the church.

With exceeding facility the money which was going to build a cathedral, to please a pious girl, is diverted to aid in blowing up St. Peter's, and Lothair finds himself as Captain Muriel, in the field, on the staff of one of his former acquaintances, Captain Bruges, the red republican general advancing against Rome. Theodora and Colonel Campian are also with him, the former disguised in male apparel, and acting as secretary to the general. We suppose her prayer uttered under the depressing intelligence of the embarkation of the French troops to assist the holy father, is an expression of the religion of nature. Why she should pray to God instead of Jupiter, we confess we do not see, unless in deference to the opinion of most of the author's readers. He might have fulfilled all the indications by quoting Pope, and at the same time complimented the memory of a poet who is getting rather out of date.

However, she hears the French have disembarked, and accordingly suspends her prayers and recovers her spirits. The impending catastrophe comes. The tragic is accomplished, and the divine Theodora is slain. Madre Natura and the secret societies are hurled against the rock of Peter, and shivered. Theodora is mortally wounded, and dying, impresses a chaste kiss upon the lips of Lothair, and exacts the promise never to conform to the Church of Rome.

The next step finds him severely wounded by a French chassepot, the guest of Lord St. Jerome in his palace in Rome, carefully attended by Sisters of Charity and Clare Arundel. Nature has perished and grace triumphs. The venom of the anti-Catholic novelist and the malice of the statesman of the establishment are now revealed in a popish plot, which is supposed to be hatched by Lothair's Roman Catholic friends, the prelates of Rome, and, by implication, the holy father.

The object of the conspiracy is to impose upon Lothair and the world that he was wounded while fighting for the defence of the holy see, instead of in the ranks of its determined enemies, and to convince him that the Blessed Virgin Mary personally appeared to rescue him from inevitable death. These pages enhance the claims of the work as one of fiction, but detract very much from its reputation as a specimen of art. The plan is thoroughly un-English, and incompatible with the characters of the actors as previously portrayed. It is by no means impossible for the Blessed Virgin or any saint or angel to appear, and we should be bound to believe the fact if vouched for on credible testimony.

It is, however, naturally, politically, and religiously impossible for priests, bishops, and prelates to combine to make any human being believe a lie, or to palm off a false miracle for any purpose whatsoever. We are charitably left in doubt as to who believed or who did not believe in the apparition, but we are treated to a conversation in which Cardinal Grandison endeavors to make Lothair believe a lie, and to abuse the enfeebled condition of his brain to reduce him to a condition of mental and moral imbecility.

Mr. Disraeli evidently expects no advantages from Catholic voters, or, perhaps, counts on the charity which he abuses.

These passages are the only dangerous ones in the book; they are skilfully contrived to crystallize wavering minds, especially of young men of high rank, into determined opposition to the holy see. They are intended to awaken sympathy for Lothair's helpless and almost hopeless captivity, and to call forth sentiments of satisfaction and pleasure at his adventurous escape. He does escape, and falls into the arms of high-priest Phœbus and two inferior divinities of Madre Natura. They have little power, however, the divine Theodora being dead; and our hero, growing blasé if not wiser and better, subsides into an æsthetical but harmless admiration of external nature and Euphrosyne. Previously to his quitting Rome, the author invents a scene which is either a sop to spiritism, or an insult to his readers' intelligence.

The appearance of the Blessed Virgin, under any circumstances, is treated with derision; but Theodora, like the Witch of Endor, is summoned to interview Lothair in the Coliseum, and remind him of his fatal promise. Perhaps he only means to illustrate a phenomenon of an over-excited brain, whose circulation is enfeebled by a long illness and a severe wound. We are left purposely in doubt on this point, as on many others. This portion of the book contains vivid and beautiful sketches of camp-life and fighting on a small scale, of Rome and Italy, the Tyrrhenean Sea and classic isles. Under the auspices of the Phœbus and Euphrosyne, he is wafted in the yacht Pan to Syria and the Holy Land, and sinks into a pleasing and self-satisfied reverie on Mount Olivet.

The descriptions of Judea and Jerusalem, Calvary and Sion, Galilee and Jordan, Lebanon and Bashan, could be penned only by one who has the traditions of the Jew, the Roman, and the Christian. There is the mournful regret of the Jew, the proud remembrance of the Roman, and the weak and sickly sentimentality of a very doubtful sort of Christian. They want depth and pathos, and leave the mind disturbed and dissatisfied. They profane rather than hallow those sacred places which inspire terror or love in every human breast.

The habits of his English friends whom he meets in the Holy Land, who made excursions which they called pilgrimages, and feasted, made love, and hunted, express about the degree of sympathy which fashionable High-Church Anglicanism has with Calvary. The noble and gentle Syrian now appears to put the finishing touch to Lothair's religious experiences. He is a new figure in fiction, a specimen of oriental Turveydrop, and the patriarch of a new school of Israelitish evangelicalism. In the absence of authentic data, we should presume he had descended from a highly respectable family of Pharisees, which had, in process of time, intermarried with the Sadducees, and perhaps suffered some slight admixture with the heathen round about. He happily succeeds in removing all distinct and vivid religious impressions from the mind of Lothair, and prepares the way, after a final interview with his former Mazzinian general, who speaks in a cheerful and airy manner of his failure to blow up St. Peter's, and consoles Catholic readers with the assurance that the old imposture is still firmly seated, for his return to England, the arms of Lady Corisande, and the bosom of the church by law established. Here we leave him married to an heiress and laid up in lavender, to grow old, fat, and gouty.

While we may speak with some degree of complaisance of this novel as a work of art merely, and a picture of life and manners, in which it is far inferior to similar novels of Bulwer and several other contemporary writers of fiction, we are compelled to discuss this production in its political and moral significance in a very different spirit. Mr. Disraeli must have some powerful motive to induce him to attack the church and outrage the feelings of Catholics throughout the world while he himself has no settled and strong religious convictions of any kind. That motive must be the only one which would operate upon a mind like his—the desire to get back to power. He starts the "No-popery" hue and cry, and invents a most contemptible, shallow, and flimsy plot to influence what he supposes to be the radical hostility of the English people to the Church of Rome, and to throw contempt and discredit upon the conversion of Englishmen of rank, and especially that of the Marquis of Bute. We think he has not only committed a moral crime, but made a gross political blunder. We believe there is a profound sympathy throughout the world in the hearts of simply honest and good people with the holy father, and that if the question could be tested by vote to-day, Who is the best man living? Pius IX. would receive an overwhelming majority. While denouncing in the strongest terms the baseness of the attempt to impute fraud, chicanery, and political trickery to the policy and plans of the church, we have reason to thank the right honorable and learned author for the revelation he has made of the secret societies. He has had ample means of learning and understanding their operations, and his implied conclusion is, that the two great forces arrayed against each other in the modern world are the Roman Catholic Church and the secret societies, of whom Masonry is the mother. This is a conclusion which we accept. It is the everlasting antagonism between the church of Christ and the church of the devil. We hope the glimpse thus afforded will cause some of our clergy to reconsider the lenient opinions they sometimes express in regard to Masonry and its offshoots, and to recognize the supernatural wisdom that has directed the unwavering opposition which the church has manifested toward these works of darkness. As a whole, we do not think Lothair will do much harm. It will provoke much conversation and discussion. It will be praised, ridiculed, admired, and contemned, and speedily sink into oblivion, to be read only by students of literature and those who seek for the light that works of fiction throw upon contemporary history. It reminds us of something which occurred a long time ago, and which cannot be offensive to the right honorable gentleman, who finds a pleasure in insulting cardinals and bishops, inasmuch as the chief personages in the transaction are prototypes of himself and his book. It is the story of Balaam and Balaam's ass. He has attempted to curse, and in fact he has blessed, and the ass which he is riding only speaks like a human being when it meets the angel in the Catholic girl Clare Arundel.