I've just read, and much enjoyed, a novel called Mrs. Peixada, by one Sidney Luska. The novel was published in 1886 by Cassell & Company, Limited, at 739 Broadway, in New York City. I had it recalled it from the library's archives, where, from all the evidence, it hadn't been touched for a hundred or so years. Why did I read this book? Because a) I'm reading stuff from the last two decades of the nineteenth century, and b) because the novel is listed in the bibliography of the wonderful anthology Victorian Love Stories (1996) edited and illuminated by Kate Flint -- an anthology which persuaded me that although I think of myself as moderately well read in Victorian fiction, there are untold riches out there of which I am embarrassed to be unaware.
Mrs. Peixada isn't exactly a shower of gold, but it's a revelation. The author "Sidney Luska" turns out to be a pseudonym for Henry Harland, who is better known for his second career as an editor of the Yellow Book. I guess that Mrs. Peixada falls into the broad category, novel of sensation, but it's also a mystery story laced with occasional touches of social comedy and progressive social thought.
The plot could be next year's blockbuster movie. Arthur Ripley woos and falls in love with the mysterious young widow, Ruth Lehmyl, who has recently moved into an apartment in his Beekman Place neighborhood. We're treated to the details their sophisticated and modern courtship -- music, museums, poetry. At the same time, Ripley, a lawyer, has been engaged to track down a murderess named Mrs. Peixada, who fled New York after being acquitted on grounds of insanity of murdering her husband. Ripley tracks her from Vienna to Rome and to London, but then loses her trail. He marries Mrs. Lehmyl -- only to discover that she and Mrs. Peixada are one and the same person.
Although there are holes in the plot through which a daumont or shandrydan could be driven with room to spare, the novel is engaging and intriguing. But then I'm an easy mark.
Perhaps our screen writers aught to do some looking at the lower tier of Victorian novels -- especially if (as it seems) they're interested in making lower-tier movies.
But for me -- it's time to learn more about Henry Harland.
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