2804 / ex the three chances

ex The Three Chances

for obscure purposes of the author of asfaltics, this page lists :
the three (3 only) instances of a something of (all in vol. 1), and
all instances of something of (sans the “a”), appearing in
The Three Chances. By the authoress of “The Fair Carew.” (London, 1858)

The story — much of it epistolary in form — concerns a Manley Frere who goes suddenly deaf. A marriage contract with Barbara Girdlestone is broken off as a result. Broken and in despair, Frere retreats to the countryside home of the Divets, wealthy friends of his lawyer, who conspire to win his affections for their daughter Phebe. Maria Palliser, betrothed but not in love with an army officer, enters the picture and falls for Frere. Subterfuges and misadventures, and a suicide, follow; Frere regains his hearing and, eventually, is reconciled with his initial betrothed.
The story told thus is ridiculous, as its contemporary reviewers universally pointed out; but at the sentence level, and in its subtle characterizations, it is an enjoyable read.
A concise synopsis of the novel is contemplated.

This page also lists/transcribes :
contemporary reviews;
and what (very little) is found on its author,
Katherine Biggar

▌ bar at left returns to top of page.

from vol 1 :

“...and she says, ‘Well, I’ll think about it,’ or, ‘I’ll see about it,’ or something of that careless sort, and then they went their different ways...” 41-42
“I have no intention of inflicting on you a history of my life, which would be profitable to neither of us. I merely refer to it to convince you how impossible a subject I must be for these visitations of softer feeling in which, whatever you, my dear Lucy, may think to the contrary, a something of the fictitious must always mingle — innocent perhaps — as far as any thing human can be called so, but still resting their charm on what I [60] perceive to be sheer delusion. With my way of life for some years past, you are better acquainted. You are aware, at least since my fourteenth year, it has been spent almost exclusively in attending on the old and infirm, and latterly in passing from one death-bed to another, as the duties of relationship, and the necessities of my dependent condition, required of me...” / 59
while her mind is intent on something of a different, and I should think a higher, nature. And yet she wants no observation on what may be passing. I see her eyes... / 154
tranquil enough in its present expression, but displaying always something of an awful aspect to one who thinks of marriage as seriously as I do. / 157
some material barrier obstructs the action of the eager spirit; something of brute force is to be overome before he can master the subject presented to him; but that subject being perhaps only some question of trivial importance, you do but regret that his time should be wasted, and his intellect taxed, for such an inferior purpose. He loses nothing of dignity or grace, but in that dubious, earnest, inquiring look you seem to be reminded of the two existences of Manley Frere; that which he has so lately known, where all was light and certainty, and the dim, doubtful life he is henceforward to endure / 169
“a bay-window looking out into the garden: if that necessary aperture, in its present form rather of the smallest, could be converted into something of an oriel?” —
Here, then, was a glaring opportunity of administering to the taste and convenience of their deaf guest, at the same time that they dexterously served their own purposes. / 187
In his low hissing voice, that seems in its most ordinary tones to imply something of a double meaning, he says he has a little communication to make — “that is all;” and, as he stations himself behind Mr. Frere’s chair (that gentleman being wholly unaware of his approach), the old man holds up a letter... / 192
“Hush! recollect the door is open.”
“Ha! that’s your affair, not mine. But, Lord! to think how hard of hearing he must be. He grows worse and worse.”
“So much the better for the future Mrs. Frere,” insinuated the Patriarch in his mildest manner, and still keeping his place behind the deaf guest, over whom his aged figure bent like something of evil overshadowing a doomed man.
It was a scene altogether which caused Maria to bite her lip... / 194
“A deaf Corydon figuring in an eclogue would be something of a novelty, eh?” / 240
“But though I have acquired this idle habit of narration, I have no taste for sitting down at the close of every day to tell myself what has happened to that self during the hours of activity. I must have something of a correspondent to write to, even if it should be a reluctant one — some shadow of a shade of a confidant. So that, even if my letters are thrown into the fire have read, I should still address my diary to you rather than to myself...” / 243
Had Miss Palliser been straitly questioned on the grounds of this conjecture, she might hardly have ventured to adduce the slight and fugitive signs on which it was actually founded — some muttered word, or passing glance of disgust or impatience, which, through all her pretended ease and satisfaction, betrayed something of the anxiety working within.
And Maria was not far wrong. / 267
“Nevertheless, time wears on, and ennui will still be spreading his lead-coloured mantle over me oftener than I could wish. Little Phebe cannot be always talking to me, or I be always in the humour to be talked to; I must go elsewhere, were it only to gather something of novelty for my letters to you; for long ago, my dear Cranston, you must have been heartily sick of Etheridge, its ways and its vicinity. I intend Venice to be my next resting-place; my first visit to it was but cursory, and I have much to examine there.” / 272
“...No doubt, from all we see and know, and perhaps feel, a man is never entirely sane when he has a woman in his head. I am far from quarreling with him on that account: it is not the insanity, but the way in which he manifests it, that I would have amnded. If the disease shewed itself in an honest, unequivocal effervescence — a something of the extra-frisky and strait-waistcoat kind — an inclination we will say to climb lamp-posts, and vault over five-barred gates, to smile upon his enemies, and give sixpence to a beggar where once he would have contented himself with a penny, or the half of that — such doings would be comprehended easily, and as easily excused. I can sympathize with many a wild escapade, the overflowing of a gay spirit which, seeing before him what the poor fool believes to be a life-long felicity, endures no bound to his soul-pervading joy. But when, instead of these pardonable freaks, I see a being, inspired by this noblest of passions, creeping and crawling by the apron-string of his beloved his face ten times more stupid than usual, his talk twenty times as dull, a silly simper, or a disgusting leer being now his nearest approach to vivacity — how is it possible to preserve respect for the lover, or the sentiment which has metamorphosed him? or help wondering what there can be in the companionship of an agreeable woman to make a man of ordinary capacity look like an ass, and act like an idiot ?”
“I have wondered into a wide digression...”
from a discussion begun by the question —
“why is it that lovers should invariably look stupid, and love-making appear to a spectator so dull and heavy a proceeding?” / 274
Seldom have I seen a couple more completely matched: their statures, gait, and measured movements all coincide; and the firmest believer in Shakspere must allow, that the course of their true love is running unimpeded to the great ocean of wedlock — some people might term it the Dead Sea. From a certain look of high-minded abstraction, which I occasionally notice in this lady, I fancy her something of a devotee — not of the Calvinistic school, however; for it would have amused you to see the magnificent scorn with which she turned over the leaves of a tract which a methodistical old lady, related to the Divets, contrived to shuffle in amongst the papers on my table... / 275
Though delivered with something of mystery — for the colloquy with Divet and his eldest daughter was carried on upon the common staircase, where Druce happened to encounter them — nothing could be clearer than the evidence. / 311
“But yesterday he declined putting it as usual into my care, and walked with it himself to the post-office, as if it was something of too much consequence to be trusted even to me. But his manner,” continued Druce — “his manner of writing it would have convinced me of that. He did not go with it in his usual collected style, but was continually throwing down his pen, and walking up and down the room between whiles, deep in thought; and all this blessed day I have had more trouble to make him understand me than I ever had before.” / 312
“And I am afraid,” he said, as his eyes surveyed the dancers with an indulgent smile — “I am really afraid your opinion of my taste, at least, will be sadly lowered when I confess to deriving a certain amount of pleasure [329] from looking on at a scene like this; for, after all, there are one or two of the group whom it is by no means disagreeable to look upon. The fact is — (I beg your pardon, I believe you are to move next) — the fact is, that though the eye is really as susceptible of a refined enjoyment in beholding a series of graceful movements as the ear is charmed in detecting harmonies and modulations, the associations connected with the two acquirements are so different that we cease to regard them as equals — (I shall take that knight unless you guard it.) Even the lowest sort of music lays claim to a something of sentiment; but honest dancing — at least, as it is exhibited in a drawing-room — makes no pretension of the kind. Good-humour and sociability are its characteristics; and I for one am disposed to pardon a little awkwardness and harmless vanity, if these can be maintained. We will allow yours to be the most exalted feeling, but is not mine the happiest?”
“Truly is it!” she answered, struck with the sweetness of his expression. “Happier — better — nobler in every respect! For your power of extracting pleasure from that which only irritates me, declares a soul so much at peace with itself, with heaven, and all the earth, that it can rise calm and unmoved by the follies and falsities that meet us in this hollow world at every turning” — — —
Here the hand hesitated — the pencil paused! Was it allowable to praise him so openly? It was, indeed, her most sincere opinion; but not for the world would she have him think her forward, or transgressing [330] any rule of propriety. So with a doubtful air, and a little blush, she was preparing to draw her pencil across the words, when Frere, apprehending her purpose, interposed, saying with some eagerness — —
“No, no! don’t rub it out! Don’t destroy any thing you have written! Suffer me for once to read something flowing straight from the heart to the pen...”/ 329
(University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, via google books)
from vol 2 :
...it would, she thought, be a most desirable point to gain.
And, though a consideration of minor moment, Mrs. George shared something of the impulse which had forced her lazy husband out upon the causeway / 31
but, as Phebe thought, with something of the manner of a princess who, seeing herself thrust unavoidably into unaccustomed society, resolves in the most gracious way in the world to make use of the good folks about her, and have entirely her own way. / 61
though neither so solemn nor enthusiastic in their reflections, meant in their worldly way something of the same tenor, when they congratulated themselves, or crowed to each other, over their asonishing “good-luck,” in having only such simple folks to deal with as himself, and “poor, stupid Mr. Girdlestone.”
Then there was Maria Palliser, the cold, suspicious sceptic — the deliberate questioner of all things in heaven above and earth beneath — even she... / 97
There, as fate would have it, his movements were arrested, and with a countenance which, though he exercised a powerful control over its lineaments, still betrayed something of the conflict working within him... / 172
yet most people felt that the manor-house had lost something of its animation, when the joke and the jollity of the rough old spinster no longer resounded through its walls. In the present conjuncture, especially, the mansion wanted all its accustomed advantages to rescue it from a charge of dulness / 210
even through the folds of her veil, he could trace something of that phenomenon which he had heard his sister-in-law remark upon in high disapprobation: and certainly it did seem to be an odd peculiarity in Miss Palliser’s constitution, that caused her so often to turn white and cadaverous, just on occasions when other young ladies, under the like circumstances, would be sporting their brightest and deepest blushes. / 243
In the note with which you honoured me, you hinted at something of great importance touching him... / 252
from vol 3 :
something of the old aristocratic leaven mixed up and working unfavourably in the otherwise enlightened mind of my deaf friend; enough of the sort of feeling, at least, to make him hold it as a settled thing / 57
certain of its containing something of peculiar interest to the writer / 72
And yet, till he had read further, something of the writer’s mistrust must be felt / 74
Something of special power must plainly have been working with the Divets, to enable them to mingle as they did with classes and coteries of the most opposite character, each regarding them as its well-wishers, yet allowing them to remain uncompromised as positive allies.
Under certain restrictions they entertained all parties in and about the place. The scientific, the literary, the philosophical, were delighted to adjourn from their solemn lectures at the institution, to the snug library, [127] and still snugger supper-room, of the mansion. On one evening, the Archaeological Society would be discussing matters of medieval interest in these same hospitable quarters; on the next a charade would be got up, always livelier and more successful than the acting at any other house in the neighbourhood; whilst the following night, perhaps, would see them busy with phrenology, or doing a little in the way of table-turning./ 126
could not listen to such language from Manley Frere, without something of her former pleasure in his respectful gallantry / 145
something of so painful a nature attending / 160
Then the letter was laid down for a second, as if it contained something of such deep importance that he could hardly master the subject without an effort / 176
that it was — “something of a faintness — a slight fit:” they “hoped and believed it was only that” / 193-194

contemporary reviews —

The Leader No. 410 (January 30, 1858) : 113-114
via Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition / Facsimiles : link (20250514)

transcription :
To the numerous idealizations of blindness and madness which crowd the literature of romance, the author of ‘The Fair Carew’ has now added a hero whose attribute is deafness. Mr. Manley Frere, handsome, spiritual, opulent, and betrothed to a beauty, affirms that sight is a faculty scarely so precious as that of hearing, and upon a particular morning wakes up to remark that his watch has ceased ticking. Nevertheless, while he moralizes upon the decay of an old companion, the hands continue to move; to convince himself he smites the floor with a heavy chair, and to his sense the blow falls more softly than velvet; he opens the window; the roller is passing noiselessly over the gravel; the thrush on a neighboring branch is sitting songless; the reaper’s scythe is as inaudible as that of death; the lattice opens and shuts without a creak : —
“The dog leaped up but gave no yell,
The wire was pulled, but woke no bell,
The ghastly knocker rose and fell,
But made no riot:
The ways of death, we all know well,
Are very quiet.”
In this instance, it is deafness and not death, that, in the presence of Mr. Manley Frere, enchants all creation into a horrible silence. He is worse than a shadowless man; he is a man without an echo; he cannot hear his own voice; the lady appointed to be his bride is consequently parted from him, through the influence of her friends, and it is astonishing what an Iliad of dramatic melancholy ensues from the paralysis of the hero’s ear. This, the nerve of the story, runs through it, pulsing sometimes where it is not seen; but the author does not wear out her invention. A [114] large space is occupied with minute portrayals of character, and with the elaboration of romantic situations; some of these are strongly marked and peculiarly original, especially the scenes descriptive of the love passabe between an ancient Colonel and the self-torturing maiden, the tragedy of whose life is brought to a ruthless close. The writer dwells with perhaps morbid intensity upon episodes of this nature; but it is her great merit that the personages of her tale are so far human and real that not one of them is made up of gloss, varnish, opalline transparency, idyllic sweetness, bushy eyebrows, scowls, and dagger-teeth. Her fault is a tendency to a redundance of detail, interrupting the flow of the narrative, which frequently stagnates in large overflows of dialogue, or in epistolary reservoirs still more artificial and purposeless.

The Atheneum No. 1581 (February 13, 1858) : 207 : link —

This is a novel of the natural school, in which , after turning a page or two, we hoped to have found something more than shrewd remarks, and now and then unquestionable facts. The progress of the story is so slow, and the narrative so involved and encumbered with endless confidential correspondence that even a patient reader must surrender at last, refusing to be charmed or interested in the amatory fortunes of Mr. Frere, that representative of imaginary deafness for whom our Authoress entreats public sympathy and regard, and whose chief claim upon our feelings in the first volume appears to arise out of the fact that he is cut off from the music of nightingales and other poetical vocalists. There is a family party — a generalizing young lady, betrothed to an exemplary bore of a colonel, who makes and takes declarations to and from the deaf man, in an original way, — a slangy old lady, whose favourite oath is “By jingo,” and who talks of her “Davy” and her “Jarvey ,” — there are love dilemmas — a little marital infidelity —a suicide — a cure, — and, finally, Mr. Frere, after vacillating through three fatiguing volumes, marries, — as nothing else remains for him, and as he ought to have been made to do in the first page, — his first chance.

The Saturday Review No. 131, Vol. 5 (London; May 1, 1858) : 452-453 : link

transcription —
It is impossible not to sympathize with the exultation with which the author of Three Chances announces her discovery of a new subject for a novel. The old subjects are pretty well exhausted. Historical novels have had their day. Jesuits, Court intrigues, forgeries, and hair-breadth escapes are nearly worked out. We know by heart every conceivable variety of saintly young lady and erring young gentleman that can figure in the gentle drama of drawing-room life. Even the various miseries which spring from personal defects have been amply dwelt upon. Miss Yonge has portrayed the halt, and Sir E. B. Lytton, in his charming creation of Nydia, has done full justice to the blind; but the deaf still lack a bard, and the author of the Fair Carew steps forward to fill the void. The book before us is devoted to the miseries of a privation in which she thinks that much that is striking in character, and much that is touching in suffering, is displayed. A peculiar character is given to the work by the fact that the authoress looks upon friendship with a very enthusiastic eye, and is no less warm in favour of friendship’s most trying incident-minute and constant letter-writing. Her two main characters are a gentleman who awakes one morning and finds himself stone-deaf, and a lady who, being engaged to another man, falls in love with the aforesaid deaf hero by reason of his touching appearance under that privation, and ultimately takes poison because she cannot have him; and both these personages are in the habit of pouring forth their inmost thoughts in voluminous letters to their respective confidantes. The result is that the book differs from other novels as Indian statesmen are said to differ from other statesmen. Almost all that it has of force and power is thrown, not into the conversation, but into the letters of its characters. There is little or no sprightly dialogue, but there is page after page of correspondence. The novel ceases to be a drama, and becomes a string of autobiographical essays. The story runs thus: — Mr. Frere, the deaf man, is on the point of being married when his affliction overtakes him. His bride-elect feels that dumb on one side is the necessary complement of deaf on the other, and naturally declines to forego the great prerogative of woman. In disgust at her inconstancy, Mr. Frere resolves to seclude himself from the world, and to shut himself up in the house of his attorney — the retreat to which jilting young ladies and thoughts of love are least likely to find their way. But the attorney and his family are, unknown to Mr. Frere, great rascals, and only harbour him in the hope of securing him as a husband to the lawyer’s youngest daughter. Accordingly this young lady is summoned from school to effect her conquest. She is described as being vulgar in thought and accent; and Mr. Frere is the most refined of men. Nevertheless she succeeds by the most impudent advances in making a very effective progress in his good graces. Just at the point when friendship ought to have warmed into love, and she was beginning to find difficulty in superinducing the wished-for change, fortune favoured her in a manner which strikingly shows the advantages of a confidential correspondence. There was staying at the attorney’s another lady, named Miss Palliser, who was engaged to a colonel cousin of the family. This lady, who is described as a sort of Childe Harold in petticoats, had closed a youth of such misery as to destroy her religious faith, by accepting, for the sake of an establishment, a lover for whom she avowedly did not care. Being a person of peculiar tastes, she employed the interval between her engagement and her marriage in falling desperately in love with the deaf Mr. Frere; and in accordance with the duties of friendship to which we have already alluded, she poured forth her feelings in a vigorous correspondence on the subject with her confidante. Unluckily, one of the letters of this correspondence was snatched out of her hands by Mr. Frere’s playful poodle, who scampered off with it to his master. Mr. Frere thought it belonged to the attorney’s daughter, was enraptured with the proofs of love which it contained, and forthwith proposed. Miss Palliser took refuge in a bottle of prussic acid, and the attorney’s family were at the height of triumph. Unfortunately, at the moment of success, Mr. Frere recovered his lost sense. No sooner could he hear his ensnarer’s voice than the delusion ceased — he broke off the match, and betook him to his former love.
There is, no doubt, a certain sort of power shown in the delineation of many of these characters. The head of the attorney’s family, old Divett, a patriarch of ninety, grown grey in rascality, but honoured by all and reverently listened to as he deals out shrewd observations larded over with unctuous piety — the keen, scheming, respectable family, and the coarse old-maid cousin, vulgar and outspoken, who never cares to veil their covetous plans in decorous language, but whose good-heartedness prompts her at last to shatter all their meshes — are all drawn, if not with sober accuracy, at least with very interesting vigour. The great fault of the story is that both the deaf man’s gullibility, and the audacious perfidy of the attorney’s family, are terribly overdrawn. Not only do these Divetts openly discuss in full family council, and in the presence of the deaf man, the daily manoeuvres by which he is to be entrapped, but they are made to take into their confidence a colonel-cousin, the soul of honour, and his affianced bride — the lady who falls in love with Mr. Frere’s interesting infirmity, and ends in a love-stricken suicide. And it does not occur to the authoress as an artistic probability, that the honour of one of these characters and the love of the other might possibly induce them, by a hint to the deaf man, to spoil the sport of the schemers who were so atrociously imposing on his misfortune and violating their own hospitality. People who are plotting to impose upon a man, do not, even though they are attorneys, ordinarily discuss the plan of operations in a full family circle after breakfast. Nor does the presence of a colonel in the army, or of the rival in the duped man’s affections, add any striking vraisemblance to the scene. The same tone of exaggeration is traceable in Miss Palliser’s character. The freaks of love are of course innumerable — so all novel readers are bound to believe; but there is a limit to the credulity even of that patient class. A picture of a highly intellectual young lady, and an affianced bride, losing her stern habitual self-control for the first time in her life, from a month’s intercourse with a deaf man whom she had never seen before, overstates the whimsicality which the severest satirist has ever ventured to attribute to the sex. A criticism on music, which incidentally occurs, betrays the same exalté strain of writing. One of the tests by which Mr. Frere is first shaken as to the refinement of his intended bride, is the fact that she is fond of Ethiopian songs. Such a canon some ten years ago would have degraded to vulgarity half the Belgravian circles, self-dubbed récherchés.
In spite of its many faults of style and failures of probability, the reader will find it hard to put this story down till he has reached its close. It will probably not detract from the reputation of the authoress of the Fair Carew. But that reputation would be better consulted if the authoress would make her personages talk, instead of writing essays to their friends; and if she would leave off painting her characters after the Owen Jones style of decoration — three bright colours and no intermediate tints.

The author is identified as Katherine Biggar — “author cannot be traced. Identified in the Smith, Elder accounts” at The Circulating Library : link

anything more

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