It is impossible in a general view of our fiction to dissociate the
novel from the short story, which, in a way, has sapped its vitality.
An astonishing number of short stories have shown a grasp of the
movement, energy, and color of American life, but writers who have
succeeded in this field have seemed incapable of longer flight. And
the originality possessed by a great number of short-story writers
seems to be shared only meagrely by those who experiment with the
novel. When some venturesome Martian explores the Library of Congress
it may be that in the short-story division he will find the surest key
to what American life has been. There are few American novels of any
period that can tip the scale against the twenty best American short
stories, chosen for sincerity and workmanship. It would seem that our
creative talent is facile and true in miniature studies, but shrinks
from an ampler canvas and a broader brush. Frank Norris’s _The Pit_ and
_The Octopus_ continue to command respect from the fact that he had a
panoramic sense that led him to exercise his fine talents upon a great
and important theme.
We have had, to be sure, many examples of the business and political
novel, but practically all of them have been struck from the same
die. A “big” politician or a “big” man of business, his daughter, and
a lover who brazenly sets himself up to correct the morals of the
powerful parent, is a popular device. Young love must suffer, but it
must not meet with frustration. In these experiments (if anything so
rigidly prescribed may be said to contain any element of experiment)
a little realism is sweetened with much romance. In the same way the
quasi-historical novel for years followed a stereotyped formula: the
lover was preferably a Northern spy within the Southern lines; the
heroine, a daughter of the traditional aristocratic Southern family.
Her shuddersome ride to seek General Lee’s pardon for the unfortunate
officer condemned to be shot at daybreak was as inevitable as measles.
The geography might be reversed occasionally to give a Northern girl
a chance, but in any event her brother’s animosity toward the hero
was always a pleasing factor. Another ancient formula lately revived
with slight variations gives us a shaggy, elemental man brought by
shipwreck or other means into contact with gentle womanhood. In his
play _The Great Divide_ William Vaughn Moody invested this device with
dignity and power, but it would be interesting to see what trick might
be performed with the same cards if the transformed hero should finally
take his departure for the bright boulevards, while the heroine seized
his bow and arrow and turned joyfully to the wilderness.
When our writers cease their futile experimenting and imitating,
and wake up to the possibilities of American material we shall have
fewer complaints of the impotence of the American novel. We are just
a little impatient of the holding of the mirror up to nature, but
nevertheless we do not like to be fooled all the time. And no one is
quicker than an American to “get down to brass tacks,” when he realizes
that he must come to it. Realism is the natural medium through which a
democracy may “register” (to borrow a term from the screen-drama) its
changing emotions, its hopes and failures. We are willing to take our
recreations in imaginary kingdoms, but we are blessed with a healthy
curiosity as to what really is happening among our teeming millions,
and are not so blind as our foreign critics and the croakers at home
would have us think as to what we do and feel and believe. But the
realists must play the game straight. They must paint the wart on the
sitter’s nose--though he refuse to pay for the portrait! Half-hearted
dallying and sidling and compromising are not getting us anywhere.
The flimsiest romance is preferable to dishonest realism. It is the
meretricious stuff in the guise of realism that we are all anxious to
delete from the catalogues.
Having thus, I hope, appeased the realists, who are an exacting
phalanx, difficult to satisfy, I feel that it is only right, just, and
proper to rally for a moment the scampering hosts of the romanticists.
It is deplorable that Realism should be so roused to bloodthirstiness
by any intrusion upon the landscape of Romanticism’s dainty frocks
and fluttering ribbons. Before Realism was, Romance ruled in many
kingdoms. If Romance had not been, Realism would not be. Let the
Cossacks keep to their side of the river and behave like gentlemen!
Others have said it who spoke with authority, and I shall not scruple
to repeat that the story for the story’s sake is a perfectly decent,
honorable, and praiseworthy thing. It is as old as human nature, and
the desire for it will not perish till man has been recreated. Neither
much argument about it, nor the limning against the gray Russian
sky-line of the august figures of Dostoiefsky, Tolstoy, and Turgenieff
will change the faith of the many who seek in fiction cheer and
recreation.
Again, I beg, let us preserve a good temper as we ponder these matters.
More and more we shall have true realism; but more and more let us
hope for the true romance. Stevenson’s familiar contributions to the
discussion are in the best vein of the cause he espouses; and although
a New York newspaper referred to him the other day as the “Caledonian
_poseur_,” his lantern-bearers continue to signal merrily from the
heights and are not to be confused with Realism’s switch targets in
the railroad yards in the valley. The lords of the high pale brow
in classrooms and on the critical dais are much too contemptuous of
Romance. Romance we must have, to the end of time, no matter how nobly
Realism may achieve. With our predisposition as a healthy-minded and
cheerful people toward tales of the night-rider and the scratch of the
whip butt on the inn door, it is unfair to slap Romance on the wrist
and post her off to bed like a naughty stepchild. Even the stern brow
of the realist must relax at times.
Many people of discernment found pleasure in our Richard Carvels,
Janice Merediths, and Hugh Wynnes. Miss Johnston’s _To Have and
to Hold_ and _Lewis Rand_ are books one may enjoy without shame.
The stickler for style need not be scornful of Mrs. Catherwood’s
_Lazarre_ and _The Romance of Dollard_. Out of Chicago came Mr. Henry
Fuller’s charming exotic, _The Chevalier of Piensieri-Vani_. _Monsieur
Beaucaire_ and Miss Sherwood’s _Daphne_ proved a while ago that all the
cherries have not been shaken from the tree--only the trees in these
cases, unfortunately, were not American. Surely one of these days a
new Peter Pan will fly over an American greenwood. I should bless the
hand that pressed upon me for reading to-night so diverting a skit as
Mr. Vielé’s _The Inn of the Silver Moon_. I shall not even pause to
argue with those who are plucking my coat-tails and whispering that
these are mere trifles, too frivolous to be mentioned when the novel is
the regular order of the conference. I am looking along the shelf for
Stockton, the fanciful and whimsical. How pleasant it would be to meet
Mrs. Leeks and Mrs. Aleshine again, or to lodge for a day at another
Squirrel Inn. And yet (O fame, thou fickle one!) when I asked a young
lady the other day if she knew Stockton, she replied with emphasis that
she did not; that “that old quaint stuff doesn’t go any more!”
Having handed Realism a ticket to Pittsburgh with generous stop-over
privileges, I regret that I am unable to point Romance to any such
promising terminus. But the realm of Romance is extra-territorial;
Realism alone demands the surveyor’s certificate and abstracts of
title. An Irish poet once assured me that fairies are to be found
everywhere, and surely somewhere between Moosehead Lake and Puget Sound
some lad is piping lustily on a new silver whistle where the deer come
down to drink.