Review of Whom God Hath Joined (1891)

27 Aug 2019 - Courtney Floyd

Published in The Athenaeum (25 Jul. 1891)

Forsaking for the nonce the realms of sensation and mystery for those of conventional romance, Mr. Fergus Hume has produced in ‘Whom God Hath Joined’ a perfect specimen of the average melodramatic novel. Given a healthy but unintellectual baronet, married to a beautiful and refined wife, and given also an unscrupulous and voluptuous adventuress and an interesting, bizarre, and egotistic poet, and it is not particularly difficult to forecast the complications that must inevitably arise from the bringing together of this quartet. Mr. Fergus Hume is a long time in reaching his crisis, but the denoument is quite in the very best Adelphi style. The names of his minor characters––Thambits, Dolser, Jiddy, Pelch, Pargowker, and Javelrack––are not very felicitous specimens of novelistic nomenclature; but in a book where ethical orthodoxy is so energetically preached it would be captious to lay stress on so trifling a blemish. The best thing in the book is the picture of a strong-minded maiden aunt and her anaemic companion. Mr. Hume is to be congratulated on the marked improvement in his style upon his earlier efforts.