CHAPTER I

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ESSAYS

ON

MODERN NOVELISTS

BY

WILLIAM LYON PHELPS

M.A. (HARVARD), PH.D. (YALE)

FORMERLY INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH AT HARVARD

LAMPSON PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE AT YALE

New York

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1910

_All rights reserved_

PREFACE

Some of the essays in this volume have appeared in recent numbers of

various periodicals. The essays on "Mark Twain" and "Thomas Hardy" were

originally printed in the _North American Review_; those on "Mrs. Ward"

and "Rudyard Kipling," in the _Forum_; those on "Alfred Ollivant,"

"Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson," and "Novels as a University Study," in the

_Independent_. The same magazine contained a portion of the present

essay on "Lorna Doone," while the article on "The Teacher's Attitude

toward Contemporary Literature" was written for the _Chicago Interior_.

My friend, Mr. Andrew Keogh, Reference Librarian of Yale University, has

been kind enough to prepare the List of Publications, thereby increasing

my debt to him for many previous favours.

W. L. P.

YALE UNIVERSITY,

Tuesday, _5 October, 1909_.

CONTENTS

PAGE

WILLIAM DE MORGAN 1

THOMAS HARDY 33

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS 56

BJOeRNSTJERNE BJOeRNSON 82

MARK TWAIN 99

HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ 115

HERMANN SUDERMANN 132

ALFRED OLLIVANT 159

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 172

MRS. HUMPHRY WARD 191

RUDYARD KIPLING 208

"LORNA DOONE" 229

APPENDICES 245

A. NOVELS AS A UNIVERSITY STUDY 245

B. THE TEACHER'S ATTITUDE TOWARD CONTEMPORARY

LITERATURE 252

C. TWO POEMS 258

LIST OF PUBLICATIONS 261

ESSAYS ON MODERN NOVELISTS

I

WILLIAM DE MORGAN

"How can you know whether you are successful or not at forty-one? How do

you know you won't have a tremendous success, all of a sudden?

Yes--after another ten years, perhaps--but _some_ time! And then twenty

years of real, happy work. It has all been before, this sort of thing.

Why not you?" Thus spoke the hopeful Alice to the despairing Charley;

and it makes an interesting comment on the very man who wrote the

conversation, and created the speakers. It has indeed "all been before,

this sort of thing"; only when an extremely clever person, whose friends

have always been saying, with an exclamation rather than an

interrogation point appended, "Why don't you write a novel!" ... waits

until he has passed his grand climacteric, he displays more faith in

Providence than in himself. All of which is as it should be. Keats died

at the age of twenty-five, but, from where I am now writing, I can

reach his Poetical Works almost without leaving my chair; he is among

the English Poets. Had Mr. De Morgan died at the age of twenty-five? The

answer is, he didn't. I am no great believer in mute, inglorious

Miltons, nor do I think that I daily pass potential novelists in the

street. Life is shorter than Art, as has frequently been observed; but

it seems long enough for Genius. Genius resembles murder in that it

_will_ out; you can no more prevent its expression than you can prevent

the thrush from singing his song twice over. Crabbed age and youth have

their peculiar accent. Keats, with all his glory, could not have written

_Joseph Vance_, and Mr. De Morgan, with all his skill in ceramics, could

not have fashioned the _Ode on a Grecian Urn_.

Sir Thomas Browne, who loved miracles, did not hesitate to classify the

supposed importance of the grand climacteric as a vulgar error; he

included a whole quaint chapter on the subject, in that old curiosity

shop of literature, the _Pseudodoxia Epidemica_. "And so perhaps hath it

happened unto the number 7. and 9. which multiplyed into themselves doe

make up 63. commonly esteemed the great Climactericall of our lives; for

the dayes of men are usually cast up by septenaries, and every seventh

yeare conceived to carry some altering character with it, either in the

temper of body, minde, or both; but among all other, three are most

remarkable, that is, 7. times 7. or forty-nine, 9. times 9. or

eighty-one, and 7. times 9. or the yeare of sixty-three; which is

conceived to carry with it, the most considerable fatality, and

consisting of both the other numbers was apprehended to comprise the

vertue of either, is therefore expected and entertained with feare, and

esteemed a favour of fate to pass it over; which notwithstanding many

suspect but to be a Panick terrour, and men to feare they justly know

not what; and for my owne part, to speak indifferently, I find no

satisfaction, nor any sufficiency in the received grounds to establish a

rationall feare."

Among various strong reasons against this superstition, Dr. Browne

presents the impressive argument shown by the Patriarchs: "the lives of

our forefathers presently after the flood, and more especially before

it, who, attaining unto 8. or 900. yeares, had not their Climacters

computable by digits, or as we doe account them; for the great

Climactericall was past unto them before they begat children, or gave

any Testimony of their virilitie, for we read not that any begat

children before the age of sixtie five."

The strange case of William De Morgan would have deeply interested Sir

Thomas, and he would have given it both full and minute consideration.

For it was just after he had safely passed the climacterical year of

sixty-three, that our now famous novelist began what is to us the most

important chapter of his life, the first chapter of _Joseph Vance_; and,

like the Patriarchs, it was only after he had reached the age of

sixty-five that he became fruitful, producing those wonderful children

of his brain that are to-day everywhere known and loved. Poets ripen

early; if a man comes to his twenty-fifth birthday without having

written some things supremely well, he may in most instances abandon all

hope of immortality in song; but to every would-be novelist it is

reasonable to whisper those encouraging words, "while there's life

there's hope." Of the ten writers who may be classed as the greatest

English novelists, only one--Charles Dickens--published a good novel

before the age of thirty. Defoe's first fiction of any consequence was

_Robinson Crusoe_, printed in 1719; he was then fifty-eight years old.

Richardson had turned fifty before his earliest novel appeared. And

although I can think at this moment of no case exactly comparable with

that of the author of _Joseph Vance_, it is a book to which experience

has contributed as well as inspiration, and would be something, if not

inferior, at all events very different, had it been composed in early or

in middle life. For it vibrates with the echoes of a long gallery, whose

walls are crowded with interesting pictures.

The recent Romantic Revival has produced many novels that have enjoyed a

brief and noisy popularity; its worst effects are noticeable on the

minds of readers, unduly stimulated by the constant perusal of

rapid-fire fiction. Many will not read further than the fourth page,

unless some casualties have already occurred. To every writer who starts

with some deliberation, they shout, "Leave your damnable faces and

begin." Authors who produce for immediate consumption are prepared for

this; so are the more clever men who write the publishers'

advertisements. An announcement of a new work by an exceedingly

fashionable novelist was headed by the appetising line, "This book goes

with a rush, and ends with a smash." That would hardly do as a

description of _Clarissa Harlowe_, _Wilhelm Meister_, or some other

classics. To a highly nervous and irritably impatient reading public, a

man whose name had no commercial value in literature gravely offered in

the year of grace 1906 an "ill-written autobiography" of two hundred and

eighty thousand words! Well, the result is what might _not_ have been

expected. If ever a confirmed optimist had reason to feel justification

of his faith, Mr. De Morgan must have seen it in the reception given to

his first novel.

Despite the great length of Mr. De Morgan's books, and the leisurely

passages of comment and rather extraneous detail, he never _begins_

slowly. No producer of ephemeral trash, no sensation-monger, has ever

got under way with more speed, or taken a swifter initial plunge into

the very heart of action. One memorable day in 1873, Count Tolstoi

picked up a little story by Pushkin, which his ten-year-old son had been

reading aloud to a member of the family. The great Russian glanced at

the first sentence, "The guests began to assemble the evening before the

_fete_." He was mightily pleased. "That's the way to begin a story!" he

cried. "The reader is taken by one stroke into the midst of the action.

Another writer would have commenced by describing the guests, the rooms,

while Pushkin--he goes straight at his goal." Some of those in the room

laughed, and suggested that Tolstoi himself appropriate such a beginning

and write a novel. He immediately retired and wrote the first sentences

of _Anna Karenina_; which is literally the manner in which that

masterpiece came into being.[1] Now if one will open any of Mr. De

Morgan's works, he will find the procedure that Tolstoi praised.

Something immediately happens--happens before we have any idea of the

real character of the agents, and before we hardly know where we are.

Indeed, the first chapter of _Somehow Good_ may serve as an artistic

model for the commencement of a novel. It is written with extraordinary

vivacity and spirit. But the author understands better how to begin his

works than he does how to end them. The close of _Joseph Vance_ is like

the mouth of the Mississippi, running off into the open sea through a

great variety of passages. The ending of _Alice-for-Short_ is

accomplished only by notes, comment, and citations. And _Somehow Good_

is simply snipped off, when it might conceivably have proceeded on its

way. His fourth novel is the only one that ends as well as it begins.

[1] _Leon Tolstoi: Vie et OEuvres. Memoires par P. Birukov. Traduction

Francaise_, Tome III, p. 177.

You cannot judge books, any more than you can individuals, by the first

words they say. If I could only discover somewhere some man, woman, or

child who had not read _Joseph Vance_, I should like to tell him the

substance of the first chapter, and ask him to guess what sort of a

story had awakened my enthusiasm. Suppose some person who had never

heard of Browning should stumble on _Pauline_, and read the first three

lines:--

"Pauline, mine own, bend o'er me--thy soft breast

Shall pant to mine--bend o'er me--thy sweet eyes,

And loosened hair and breathing lips, and arms"

one sees the sharp look of expectation on the reader's face, and one

almost laughs aloud to think what there is in store for him. He will

very soon exhibit symptoms of bewilderment, and before he has finished

the second page he will push the book aside with an air of pious

disappointment. No slum story ever opened more promisingly than _Joseph

Vance_. We are led at the very start into a dirty rum-shop; there

immediately ensues a fight between two half-drunken loafers in the

darkness without; this results in the double necessity of the police and

the hospital; and a broken bottle, found against a dead cat, is the

missile employed to destroy a human eye. In _Alice-for-Short_, the first

chapter shows us a ragged little girl of six carrying a jug of beer from

a public-house to a foul basement, where dwell her father and mother,

both victims of alcohol. The police again. On the third page of _Somehow

Good_, we have the "fortune to strike on a rich vein of so-called life

in a London slum." The hero gives a drunken, murderous scoundrel a "blow

like the kick of a horse, that lands fairly on the eye socket with a

cracking concussion that can be heard above the tumult, and is followed

by a roar of delight from the male vermin." Once more the police. _It

Never Can Happen Again_ begins in a corner of London unspeakably vile.

Zola and Gorky at their best, and worst--for it is sometimes hard to

make the distinction--have not often surpassed the first chapters of Mr.

De Morgan's four novels. Never has a writer waded more unflinchingly

into the slime. And yet the very last word to characterise these books

would be the word "slum-stories." The foundations of Mr. De Morgan's

work, like the foundations of cathedrals, are deep in the dirt; but the

total impression is one of exceeding beauty. Indeed, with our novelist's

conception of life, as a progress toward something high and sublime,

where evil not only exists, but is a necessary factor in development,

the darkness of the shadows proves the intense radiance of the sun. The

planet Venus is so bright, we are accustomed to remark, that it

sometimes casts a shadow. Christopher Vance emerges from beastly

degradation to a position of power, influence, and usefulness; the Heath

family, in receiving Alice, entertain an angel unawares; and the march

of _Somehow Good_ goes from hell, through purgatory, and into paradise.

It is a divine comedy, in more ways than one; and shows that sometimes

the goal of ill is very unlike the start.

We had not read far into _Joseph Vance_ before we shouted _Dickens

Redivivus!_ or some equivalent remark in the vernacular. We made this

outcry with no tincture of depreciation and with no yelp of the

plagiarism-hunting hound. It requires little skill to observe the

similarity to Dickens, as was proved by the fact that everyone noticed

it. In general, the shout was one of glad recognition; it was the

welcome given to the sound of a voice that had been still. It was not an

imitation: it was a reincarnation. The spirit of Dickens had really

entered into William De Morgan; many chapters in _Joseph Vance_ sounded

as if they had been dictated by the ghost of the author of

_Copperfield_. No book since 1870 had given so vivid an impression of

the best-beloved of all English novelists. This is meant to be high

praise. When Walt Whitman was being exalted for his unlikeness to the

great poets, one sensible critic quietly remarked, "It is easier to

differ from the great poets than to resemble them." To "remind us of

Dickens" would be as difficult for many modern novelists as for a

molehill to remind us of the Matterhorn.

We may say, however, that _Joseph Vance_ and _It Never Can Happen Again_

are more like Dickens in character and in detail than is

_Alice-for-Short_; and that the latter is closer to Dickens than is

_Somehow Good_. The Reverend Benaiah Capstick infallibly calls to mind

the spiritual adviser of Mrs. Weller; with the exception that the latter

was also spirituous. That kind of religion does not seem strongly to

appeal to either novelist; for Mr. Stiggins took to drink, and Capstick

to an insane asylum. There are many things in the conversation of

Christopher Vance that recall the humorous world-wisdom of the elder

Weller; and so we might continue, were it profitable. Another great

point of resemblance between Mr. De Morgan and Dickens is seen in the

method of narration chosen by each. Here William De Morgan is simply

following in the main track of English fiction, where the novelist

cannot refrain from _editing_ the text of the story. The course of

events is constantly interrupted by the author's gloss. Now when the

author's mind is not particularly interesting, the comment is an

unpleasant interruption; it is both impertinent and dull. But when the

writer is himself more profound, more clever, and more entertaining than

even his best characters, we cannot have too much of him. It is true

that Mr. De Morgan has told a good story in each of his novels; but it

is also true that the story is not the cause of their reputation. We

read these books with delight because the characters are so attractive,

and because the author's comments on them and on events are so

penetrating. If it is true, as some have intimated, that this method of

novel-writing proves that Mr. De Morgan, whatever he is, is not a

literary artist, then it is undeniable that Fielding, Dickens, Trollope,

and Thackeray are not artists; which is absurd, as Euclid would say.

Great books are invariably greater than our definitions of them.

Browning and Wagner composed great works of Art without paying much

attention to the rules of the game.

As compared with French and Russian fiction, English novels from

Fielding to De Morgan have unquestionably sounded a note of insincerity.

One reason for this lies in the fact that to the Anglo-Saxon mind,

Morality has always seemed infinitely more important than Art. Matthew

Arnold spent his life fighting the Philistines; but when he said that

conduct was three-fourths of life, there was jubilation in the enemy's

camp. Now Zola declared that a novel could no more be called immoral in

its descriptions than a text-book on physiology; the novelist commits a

sin when he writes a badly constructed sentence. A disciple of this

school insisted that it was more important to have an accurate sense of

colour than to have a clear notion of right and wrong. Fortunately for

the true greatness of humanity, you never can get the average Englishman

or American to swallow such doctrine. But it is at the same time certain

that among English-speaking peoples Art has seldom been taken with

sufficient seriousness. We are handy with our fists; but you cannot

imagine us using them in behalf of literature, as we do for real or

personal property. So far as I know, an English audience in the theatre

has never been excited on a purely artistic question--a matter of

frequent occurrence on the Continent. We seem to believe that, after

all, Art has no place in the serious business of life; it is a

recreation, to amuse a mind overstrained by money-making or by

political affairs. We leave it to women, who are supposed to have more

leisure for trifles.

For this reason, English novelists have generally felt compelled to

treat their public as a tired mother treats a restless child. Our

novelists have been in mortal terror lest the attention of their

audience should wander; and instead of taking their work and their

readers seriously, they continually hand us lollipops. Their attitude is

at once apologetic and insulting. They do not dare to believe that a

great work of Art--without personal comment--has in itself moral

greatness, and they do not dare trust the intelligence of spectators,

but must forsooth constantly break the illusion by soothing or

explanatory remarks. The fact that in our greatest writers this is often

presented from the standpoint of humour, does not prevent the loss of

illusion; and in writers who are not great, the reader feels nothing but

indignation. In the first chapter of the third book of _Amelia_, we find

the following advice:--

"He then proceeded as Miss Matthews desired; but, lest all our

readers should not be of her opinion, we will, according to our

usual custom, endeavour to accommodate ourselves to every taste,

and shall, therefore, place this scene in a chapter by itself,

which we desire all our readers who do not love, or who, perhaps,

do not know the pleasure of tenderness, to pass over; since they

may do this without any prejudice to the thread of the narrative."

In the first chapter of _Shirley_, Charlotte Bronte prologises as

follows:--

"If you think ... that anything like a romance is preparing for

you, reader, you never were more mistaken.... Calm your

expectations; reduce them to a lowly standard. Something real,

cool, and solid lies before you;... It is not positively affirmed

that you shall not have a taste of the exciting, perhaps toward the

middle and close of the meal, but it is resolved that the first

dish set upon the table shall be one that a Catholic--ay, even an

Anglo-Catholic--might eat on Good Friday in Passion Week; it shall

be cold lentils and vinegar without oil; it shall be unleavened

bread with bitter herbs, and no roast lamb."

William Black once wrote a novel called _Madcap Violet_, which he

intended for a tragedy, and in which, therefore, we have a right to

expect some artistic dignity. About midway in the volume we find the

following:--

"At this point, and in common courtesy to his readers, the writer

of these pages considers himself bound to give fair warning that

the following chapter deals solely and wholly with the shooting of

mergansers, curlews, herons, and such like fearful wild fowl;

therefore, those who regard such graceless idling with aversion,

and are anxious to get on with the story, should at once proceed to

chapter twenty-three."

At the beginning of the second chapter of _Dr. Thorne_, one of the best

of Trollope's novels, we are petted in this manner:--

"A few words must still be said about Miss Mary before we rush into

our story; the crust will then have been broken, and the pie will

be open to the guests."

At the three hundred and seventy-second page of the late Marion

Crawford's entertaining story, _The Prima Donna_, the course of the

narrative is thus interrupted:--

"Now at this stage of my story it would be unpardonable to keep my

readers in suspense, if I may suppose that any of them have a

little curiosity left. Therefore, I shall not narrate in detail

what happened Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, seeing that it was just

what might have been expected to happen at a week-end party during

the season when there is nothing in the world to do but to play

golf, tennis, or croquet, or to write or drive all day, and to work

hard at bridge all the evening; for that is what it has come to."

Finally, in the first chapter of Mr. Winston Churchill's novel,

_Coniston_, the author pleads with his reader in this style:--

"The reader is warned that this first love-story will, in a few

chapters, come to an end; and not to a happy end--otherwise there

would be no book. Lest he should throw the book away when he

arrives at this page, it is only fair to tell him that there is

another and much longer love-story later on, if he will only

continue to read, in which, it is hoped, he may not be

disappointed."

Imagine Turgenev or Flaubert scribbling anything similar to the

interpolations quoted above! When a great French novelist does

condescend to speak to his reader, it is in a tone, that so far from

belittling his own art, or sugaring the expectation of his listener, has

quite the contrary effect. On the second page of _Pere Goriot_, we find

the following solemn warning:--

"Ainsi ferez-vous, vous qui tenez ce livre d'une main blanche, vous

qui vous enfoncez dans un molleux fauteuil en vous disant:

'Peut-etre ceci va-t-il m'amuser.' Apres avoir lu les secretes

infortunes du pere Goriot, vous dinerez avec appetit en mettant

votre insensibilite sur le compte de l'auteur, en le taxant

d'exageration, en l'accusant de poesie. Ah! sachez-le: ce drame

n'est ni une fiction ni un roman. _All is true_, il est si

veritable, que chacun peut en reconnaitre les elements chez soi,

dans son coeur peut-etre."

The chief objection to these constant remarks to the reader, so common

in great English novels, is that they for the moment destroy the

illusion. Suppose an actress in the midst of Ophelia's mad scene should

suddenly pause and address the audience in her own accents in this wise:

"I observe that some ladies among the spectators are weeping, and that

some men are yawning. Allow me to say to those of you who dislike tragic

events on the stage, that I shall remain here only a few moments longer,

and shall not have much to say; and that if you will only be patient,

the grave-diggers will come on before long, and it is probable that

their conversation will amuse you."

The two reasons given above, the fear that a novel unexplained by

author's comment will not justify itself morally, and that at all

hazards the gentle reader must be placated and entertained, undoubtedly

partly explain a long tradition in the course of English fiction. But

while we may protest against this sort of thing in general, it is well

to remember that we must take our men of genius as we find them, and

rejoice that they have seen fit to employ any channel of expression.

There are many different kinds of great novels, as there are of great

poems. The fact that Tennyson's poetry belongs to the first class does

not in the least prevent the totally different poetry of Browning from

being ranked equally high. _Joseph Vance_ is a very different kind of

novel from _The Return of the Native_, but both awaken our wonder and

delight. There are some books that inspire us by their art, and there

are others that inspire us by their ideas. Turgenev was surely a greater

artist than Tolstoi, but _Anna Karenina_ is a veritable piece of life.

I do not say that William De Morgan is not a great artist, because, if I

should say it, I should not know exactly what I meant. But the immense

pleasure that his books give me is another kind of pleasure than I

receive from _The Scarlet Letter_. _Joseph Vance_ is not so much a

beautifully written or exquisitely constructed novel as it is an

encyclopaedia of life. We meet real people, we hear delightful

conversation, and the tremendously interesting personality of the author

is everywhere apparent. The opinion of many authors concerning

immortality is not worth attention; but I should very much like to know

Mr. De Morgan's views on this absorbing subject. And so I turn to the

fortieth chapter of _Joseph Vance_ with great expectations. The reader

is advised to skip this chapter, a sure indication of its importance.

For, like all humorists, Mr. De Morgan is a bit shamefaced when he talks

about the deepest things, the things that really interest him most. It

surely will not do to have Dr. Thorpe talk like the Reverend Mr.

Capstick, although they both eagerly discuss what we call the

supernatural. Capstick is an ass, but he has one characteristic that we

might, to a certain extent, imitate; he sees no reason to apologise for

conversing on great topics, or to break up such a conversation with an

embarrassed laugh. Most of us are horribly afraid of being taken for

sanctimonious persons, when there is really not the slightest danger. We

are always pleasantly surprised when we discover that our friends are at

heart just as serious as we are, and that they, too, regret the mask of

flippancy that our Anglo-Saxon false modesty compels us to wear. But, as

some one has said, you cannot expect your audience to take your views

seriously unless you express them with seriousness. Mr. De Morgan, like

Robert Browning, would doubtless deny that Dr. Thorpe spoke only the

author's thoughts; but just as you can hear Browning's voice all through

those "utterances of so many imaginary persons, not mine," so I feel

confident that amid all the light banter of this charming talk in the

fortieth chapter, the following remark of Dr. Thorpe expresses the

philosophy of William De Morgan, and at the same time the basal moral

principle underlying this entire novel:--"The highest good is the growth

of the Soul, and the greatest man is he who rejoices most in great

fulfilments of the will of God."

For although Mr. De Morgan belongs, like Dickens, to the great

humorists, who, while keenly conscious of the enormous difference

between right and wrong, regard the world with a kindly smile for human

weakness and folly, he is mainly a psychologist. To all of his novels he

might appropriately have prefixed the words of the author of _Sordello_:

"My stress lay on the incidents in the development of a soul; little

else is worth study." All the characters that he loves show

_soul-development_; the few characters that are unlovely have souls that

do not advance. Joseph, Lossie, Janey, Alicia, Charles Heath, Rosalind,

Athelstan, have the inner man renewed day by day; one feels that at

physical death such personalities proceed naturally into a sphere of

eternal progress. On the other hand, Joey's soul stands still; so do the

souls of Violet, Lavinia Straker, Mrs. Vereker, Mrs. Eldridge, Judith,

and Mrs. Craik. Why should they live for ever? They would always be the

same. This is the real distinction in these novels between people that

are fundamentally good and those that are fundamentally bad; whether

their badness causes tragedy or merely constant irritation. It is an

original manner of dividing virtue from vice, but it is illuminating.

The events in Mr. De Morgan's books are improbable, but the people are

probable. The same might be said of Shakespeare. It is highly improbable

that Christopher Vance could have risen to fortune through his

sign-board, or that Fenwick should have been electrocuted at the feet of

his wife's daughter. But Christopher Vance, Fenwick, and Sally behave

precisely as people would behave in such emergencies in real life. In

many ways I think Christopher Vance is the most convincing character in

all the novels; at any rate, I had rather hear him talk than any of the

others. There is no trace of meanness in him, and even when he is drunk

he is never offensive or disgusting. The day after he has returned

intoxicated from a meeting of the Board of Arbitrators, he seems rather

inquisitive as to his exact condition, and asks his son:--

"I wasn't singin' though, Nipper, was I?" I said certainly not!

"Not 'a Landlady of France she loved an Officer, 'tis said,' nor

'stick 'em up again in the middle of a three-cent pie'?"

"Neither of them--quite certain." My father seemed reassured.

"That's _something_, anyhow," said he. "The other Arbitrators was

singin' both. Likewise 'Rule Britannia.' Weak-headed cards, the two

on 'em!"

The scene at Christopher Vance's death-bed, when Joseph finally

discloses the identity of the boy who threw the piece of glass into the

eye of the Sweep, touches the depths of true pathos. One feels the

infinite love of the father for the little son who defended him. He is

quite rightly prouder of that exploit than of all the Nipper's

subsequent learning.

While the imaginary events in this novel bear no sort of relation to the

circumstances of the author's own life, I cannot help launching the mere

guess that the father of William De Morgan was, to a certain extent, a

combination of Christopher Vance and Dr. Thorpe. For Augustus De Morgan

was not only a distinguished mathematical scholar, he was well-known for

the keenness of his wit. He had the learning and refinement of Dr.

Thorpe, and the shrewd, irresistible humour of old Vance. At all events,

this striking combination in the novelist can be traced to no more

probable source.

The influence of good women on men's lives is repeatedly shown; it is

indeed a leading principle in three of the books. One of the most

notable differences in novels that reflect a pessimistic

_Weltanschauung_ from those that indicate the contrary may be seen right

here. How completely the whole significance of the works of Guy de

Maupassant would change had he included here and there some women who

combined virtue with personal charm! "Were there no women, men would

live like gods," said a character in one of Dekker's plays; judged by

much modern fiction, one would feel like trying the experiment. But what

would become of Mr. De Morgan's novels, and of the attitude toward life

they so clearly reflect, if they contained no women? Young Joseph Vance

was fortunate indeed in having in his life the powerful influence of two

such characters as Lossie Thorpe and Janey Spencer. They were what a

compass is to a shipman, taking him straight on his course through the

blackest storms. It was for Lossie that he made the greatest sacrifice

in his whole existence; and nothing pays a higher rate of moral interest

than a big sacrifice. It was Janey who led him from the grossness of

earth into the spiritual world, something that Lossie, with all her

loveliness, could not do. Both women show that there is nothing

inherently dull in goodness; it may be accompanied with some _esprit_.

We are too apt to think that moral goodness is represented by such

persons as the Elder Brother in the story of the Prodigal Son, when the

parable indicates that the younger brother, with all his crimes, was

actually the more virtuous of the two. It took no small skill for Mr. De

Morgan to create such an irresistibly good woman as Lossie, make his

hero in love with her from boyhood, cause her to marry some one else,

and then to unite the heart-broken hero with another girl; and through

these tremendous upheavals to make all things work together for good,

and to the reader's complete satisfaction. This could not possibly have

been accomplished had not the author been able to fashion a woman, who,

while totally unlike Lossie in every physical and mental aspect, was

spiritually even more attractive. I am not sure which of the two girls

has the bigger place in their maker's heart; I suspect it is Lossie; but

to me Janey is not only a better woman, I really have a stronger

affection for her.

In _Alice-for-Short_, the hero is again blessed with two guardian

angels, his sister and his second wife. Mr. De Morgan is extremely

generous to his favourite men, in permitting either their second choice

or their second experiment in matrimony to prove such an amazing

success. Comparatively few novelists dare to handle the problem of happy

second marriages; the subject for some reason does not lend itself

readily to romance. Josh Billings said he knew of absolutely nothing

that would cure a man of laziness; but that a second wife would

sometimes help. Although he said this in the spirit of farce, it is

exactly what happens in Mr. De Morgan's books. Janey is not technically

a second wife, but she is spiritually; and she rescues Joseph from

despair, restores his ambition and capacity to work, and after her death

is like a guiding star. Alice is a second wife, both in her husband's

heart and in the law; and her influence on Charles Heath provides

exactly the stimulus needed to save him from himself. Fenwick marries

for the second time, and although his wife is in one sense the same

person, in another she is not; she is quite different in everything

except constancy from the wretched girl he left sobbing on the verandah

in India. And what would have become of Fenwick without the mature

Rosalind? Salvation, in Mr. De Morgan's novels, often assumes a feminine

shape. They are not books of Friendship, like _The Cloister and the

Hearth_, _Trilby_, and _Es War_; with all their wonderful intelligence

and play of intellect, they would seem almost barren without women. And

he is far more successful in depicting love after marriage than before.

One of the most charming characteristics of these stories is the

frequent representation of the highest happiness known on earth--not

found in the passion of early youth, but in a union of two hearts

cemented by joy and sorrow in the experience of years. No novelist has

ever given us better pictures of a good English home; more attractive

glimpses into the reserveless intimacy of the affairs of the hearth. The

conversations between Christopher Vance and his wife, between Sir Rupert

and Lady Johnson, between Fenwick and Rosalind, are decidedly superior

to the "love-making" scenes. Indeed, the description of the walk during

which young Dr. Vereker definitely wins Sally, is disappointing. It is

perhaps the only important episode in Mr. De Morgan's novels that shows

more effort than inspiration.

The style in these books, despite constant quotation, is not at all a

literary style. Joseph Vance is called "an ill-written autobiography,"

because it lacks entirely the conventional manner. Many works of fiction

are composed in what might be called the terminology of the art; just as

works in science and in sport are compelled to repeat constantly the

same verbal forms. The astonishing freshness and charm of Mr. De

Morgan's method consist partly in his abandonment of literary precedent,

and adhering only to actual observation. It is as though an actor on the

stage should suddenly drop his mannerism of accent and gesture, and

behave as he would were he actually, instead of histrionically, happy or

wretched. Despite the likeness to Dickens in characters and atmosphere,

_Joseph Vance_ sounds not only as though its author had never written a

novel previously, but as though he had never read one. It has the

strangeness of reality. There is no lack of action in these huge

narratives: the men and women pass through the most thrilling incidents,

and suffer the greatest extremes of passion, pain, and joy that the

human mind can endure. We have three cases of drowning, one tremendous

fire; and in _Somehow Good_--which, viewed merely as a story, is the

best of them--a highly eventful plot; and, spiritually, the characters

give us an idea of how much agony the heart can endure without quite

breaking. But though the bare plot seems almost like melodrama, the

style is never on stilts. In the most awful crises, the language has the

absolute simplicity of actual circumstance. When Rosalind recognises her

husband in the cab, we wonder why she takes it so coolly. Some sixty

pages farther along, we come upon this paragraph:--

"Nevertheless, these were not so absolute that her demeanour

escaped comment from the cabby, the only witness of her first sight

of the 'electrocuted' man. He spoke of her afterwards as that

squealing party down that sanguinary little turning off Shepherd's

Bush Road he took that sanguinary galvanic shock to."

Our author is fond of presenting events of the most momentous

consequence through the lips of humble and indifferent observers. It is

only the cabman's chance testimony which shows us that even Rosalind's

superb self-control had the limit determined by real womanhood; and in

_Joseph Vance_, the great climax of emotion, when Lossie visits her

maligned old lover, is given with unconscious force through the faulty

vernacular of the "slut" of a servant-maid, who is utterly unaware of

the angels that ministered over that scene; and then by the broken

English of the German chess-player, equally blind to the divine

presence. Compare these two crude testimonies, which make the ludicrous

blunders made by the Hostess in that marvellous account of the death of

Falstaff, and you have a veritable harmony of the Gospels. Some

novelists use an extraordinary style to describe ordinary events; Mr. De

Morgan uses an ordinary style to describe extraordinary events.

Even in his latest book, _It Never Can Happen Again_,[2] the least

cheerful of all his productions, the title is intended to be as

comforting as Charles Reade's caption, _It Is Never Too Late to Mend_.

In this story, Mr. De Morgan descends into hell. Delirium tremens has

never been pictured with more frightful horror than in the awful night

when the mad wretch is bent on murder. No scene in any naturalistic

novel surpasses this in vivid detail. Indeed, all of Mr. De Morgan's

books might well be circulated as anti-alcohol tracts; the real villain

in his tragedies is Drink. Even though drunkenness in a certain aspect

supplies comedy in _Joseph Vance_, drink is, after all, the ruin of old

Christopher, and we are left with no shade of doubt that this is so. Mr.

De Morgan's unquestionable optimism does not blink the dreadful aspects

of life, any more than did Browning's. The scene in the hospital, where

the fingers without finger-nails clasp the mighty hand in the rubber

glove, is as loathsomely horrible as anything to be found in the annals

of disease. And the career of Blind Jim, entirely ignorant of his divine

origin and destiny, is a series of appalling calamities. He has lost his

sight in a terrible accident; he is run over by a waggon, and loses his

leg; he is run over by an automobile, and loses his life. He has also

lost, though he does not know it, what is far dearer to him than eyes,

or legs, or life,--his little daughter. And yet we do not need the

spirit voice of the dead child to assure us that all is well. Indeed,

the tragic history of Jim and Lizarann is not nearly so depressing as

the humdrum narrative of the melancholy quarrel between Mr. and Mrs.

Challis. In previous novels, the author has been pleased to show us

domestic happiness; here we have the dreary round of perpetual discord.

Of course no one can complain of Mr. De Morgan for his choice in this

matter; it is certainly true that not all marriages are happy, even

though the majority of them (as I believe) are. The difficulty is that

the triangle in this book--husband, wife, and beautiful young lady--has

no corner of real interest. It is not entirely the fault of either Mr.

or Mrs. Challis that they separate; there is much to be said on both

sides. What we object to is the fact that it is impossible to sympathise

with either of them; this is not because each is guilty, but because

neither is interesting. We do not much care what becomes of them. And as

for Judith, the technical virgin who causes all the trouble, she is a

very dull person. We do not need this book to learn that female beauty

without brains fascinates the ordinary man. The best scenes are those

where Blind Jim and Lizarann appear; they are a couple fully worthy of

Dickens at his best. Unfortunately they do not appear often enough to

suit us, and they both die. We could more easily have spared Mr. and

Mrs. Challis, the latter's abominable tea-gossip friend, and that old

hypocritical tiger-cat, Mrs. Challis's mother. Why does Mr. De Morgan

make elderly women so disgustingly unattractive? Does his sympathy with

life desert him here? The entire Challis household, including the

satellites of relationship and propinquity, are hardly worth the

author's skill or the reader's attention. One would suppose that a

brilliant novelist, like Challis, pulled from the domestic orbit by a

comet like Judith, would be for a time in an interesting, if not an

edifying, position; but he is not. Perhaps Mr. De Morgan wishes to show

with the impartiality of a true chronicler of life that a married man,

drawn away by his own lust, and enticed, can be just as dull in sin as

in virtue. Yet the long dreary family storm ends in sunshine; the

discordant pair are redeemed by Love,--the real motive power of this

story,--and one feels that it can never happen again. In spite of Mr. De

Morgan's continual onslaught on creeds, Athelstan Taylor, who believes

the whole Apostles' Creed, compares very favourably with Challis, who

believes only the first seven and the last four words of it, apparently

the portion accepted by Mr. De Morgan: and by their fruits ye shall know

them. It is certainly a proof of the fair-mindedness of our novelist,

that he has created orthodox believers like Lossie's husband and

Athelstan Taylor, big wholesome fellows, both of them; and has

deliberately made both so irresistibly attractive. The professional

parson is often ridiculed in modern novels; it is worth noting that in

this story the only important character in the whole work who combines

intelligence with virtue is the Reverend Athelstan Taylor.

[2] Through the kindness of Messrs. Henry Holt and Co., I have had the

privilege of reading this novel in proof sheets.

Seldom have any books shown so intimate a knowledge of the kingdom of

this world and at the same time reflected with such radiance the kingdom

of heaven. It is noteworthy and encouraging that a man who portrays with

such humorous exactitude the things that are seen and temporal, should

exhibit so firm a faith in the things that are unseen and eternal. In

_Joseph Vance_ we have the growth of the soul from an environment of

poverty and crime to the loftiest heights of nobility and self-denial;

and the theme in the Waldstein Sonata triumphantly repeats the

confidence of Dr. Thorpe, who regards death not as a barrier, but as a

gateway. In _Alice-for-Short_, the mystery of the spirit-world

completely envelops the humdrum inconsistencies that form the daily

round, the trivial task; this is seen perhaps not so much in the

"ghosts," for they speak of the past; but the figure of old

Verrinder--whose heart revolves about the Asylum like the planet around

the sun--and the waking of old Jane from her long sleep, seem to

symbolise the impotence of Time to quench the divine spark of Love. This

story is called a "dichronism"; but it might have been called a

_dichroism_, for from one viewpoint it reflects only the clouded colour

of earth, and from another a celestial glory. In _Somehow Good_ the

ugliest tragedy takes its place in the unapparent order of life. It is

not that good finally reigns in spite of evil; the final truth is that

in some manner good is the very goal of ill. The agony of separation has

tested the pure metal of character; and the fusion of two lives is made

permanent in the frightful heat of awful pain. The fruit of a repulsive

sin may be Beauty, like a flower springing from a dung-hill. "What

became of the baby?... _The_ baby--_his_ baby--_his_ horrible baby!"

"Gerry darling! Gerry _dearest_! do think...."

II

THOMAS HARDY

The father of Thomas Hardy wished his son to enter the church, and this

object was the remote goal of his early education. At just what period

in the boy's mental development Christianity took on the form of a

meaningless fable, we shall perhaps never know; but after a time he

ceased to have even the faith of a grain of mustard seed. This absence

of religious belief has proved no obstacle to many another candidate for

the Christian ministry, as every habitual church-goer knows; or as any

son of Belial may discover for himself by merely reading the prospectus

of summer schools of theology. There has, however, always been a certain

cold, mathematical precision in Mr. Hardy's way of thought that would

have made him as uncomfortable in the pulpit as he would have been in an

editor's chair, writing for salary persuasive articles containing the

exact opposite of his individual convictions. But, although the beauty

of holiness failed to impress his mind, the beauty of the sanctuary was

sufficiently obvious to his sense of Art. He became an ecclesiastical

architect, and for some years his delight was in the courts of the Lord.

Instead of composing sermons in ink, he made sermons in stones,

restoring to many a decaying edifice the outlines that the original

builder had seen in his vision centuries ago. For no one has ever

regarded ancient churches with more sympathy and reverence than Mr.

Hardy. No man to-day has less respect for God and more devotion to His

house.

Mr. Hardy's professional career as an architect extended over a period

of about thirteen years, from the day when the seventeen-year-old boy

became articled, to about 1870, when he forsook the pencil for the pen.

His strict training as an architect has been of enormous service to him

in the construction of his novels, for skill in constructive drawing has

repeatedly proved its value in literature. Rossetti achieved positive

greatness as an artist and as a poet. Stevenson's studies in engineering

were not lost time, and Mr. De Morgan affords another good illustration

of the same fact. Thackeray was unconsciously learning the art of the

novelist while he was making caricatures, and the lesser Thackeray of a

later day--George du Maurier--found the transition from one art to the

other a natural progression. Hopkinson Smith and Frederic Remington, on

a lower but dignified plane, bear witness to the same truth. Indeed,

when one studies carefully the beginnings of the work of imaginative

writers, one is surprised at the great number who have handled an

artist's or a draughtsman's pencil. A prominent and successful

playwright of to-day has said that if he were not writing plays, he

should not dream of writing books; he would be building bridges.

Mr. Hardy's work as an ecclesiastical architect laid the real

foundations of his success as a novelist; for it gave him an intimate

familiarity with the old monuments and rural life of Wessex, and at the

same time that eye for precision of form that is so noticeable in all

his books. He has really never ceased to be an architect. Architecture

has contributed largely to the matter and to the style of his stories.

Two architects appear in his first novel. In _A Pair of Blue Eyes_

Stephen Smith is a professional architect, and in coming to restore the

old Western Church he was simply repeating the experience of his

creator. No one of Mr. Hardy's novels contains more of the facts of his

own life than _A Laodicean_, which was composed on what the author then

believed to be his death-bed; it was mainly dictated, which I think

partly accounts for its difference in style from the other tales. The

hero, Somerset, is an architect whose first meeting with his future

wife occurs through his professional curiosity concerning the castle;

and a considerable portion of the early chapters is taken up with

architectural detail, and of his enforced rivalry with a competitor in

the scheme for restoration. Not only does Mr. Hardy's scientific

profession speak through the mouths of his characters, but old and

beautiful buildings adorn his pages as they do the landscape he loves.

In _Two on a Tower_ the ancient structure appears here and there in the

story as naturally and incidentally as it would to a pedestrian in the

neighbourhood; in _A Pair of Blue Eyes_ the church tower plays an

important part in a thrilling episode, and its fall emphasises a

Scripture text in a diabolical manner. The old church at Weatherbury is

so closely associated with the life history of the men and women in _Far

from the Madding Crowd_ that as one stands in front of it to-day the

people seem to gather again about its portal....

But while Mr. Hardy has drawn freely on his knowledge of architecture in

furnishing animate and inanimate material for his novels, the great

results of his youthful training are seen in a more subtle and

profounder influence. The intellectual delight that we receive in the

perusal of his books--a delight that sometimes makes us impatient with

the work of feebler authors--comes largely from the architectonics of

his literary structures. One never loses sight of Hardy the architect.

In purely constructive skill he has surpassed all his contemporaries.

His novels--with the exception of _Desperate Remedies_ and _Jude the

Obscure_--are as complete and as beautiful to contemplate as a

sculptor's masterpiece. They are finished and noble works of art, and

give the same kind of pleasure to the mind as any superbly perfect

outline. Mr. Hardy himself firmly believes that the novel should first

of all be a story: that it should not be a thesis, nor a collection of

reminiscences or _obiter dicta_. He insists that a novel should be as

much of a whole as a living organism, where all the parts--plot,

dialogue, character, and scenery--should be fitly framed together,

giving the single impression of a completely harmonious building. One

simply cannot imagine him writing in the manner of a German novelist,

with absolutely no sense of proportion; nor like the mighty Tolstoi, who

steadily sacrifices Art on the altar of Reality; nor like the great

English school represented by Thackeray, Dickens, Trollope, and De

Morgan, whose charm consists in their intimacy with the reader; they

will interrupt the narrative constantly to talk it over with the merest

bystander, thus gaining his affection while destroying the illusion. Mr.

Hardy's work shows a sad sincerity, the noble austerity of the true

artist, who feels the dignity of his art and is quite willing to let it

speak for itself.

His earliest novel, _Desperate Remedies_, is more like an architect's

first crude sketch than a complete and detailed drawing. Strength,

originality, and a thoroughly intelligent design are perfectly clear;

one feels the impelling mind behind the product. But it resembles the

_plan_ of a good novel rather than a novel itself. The lines are hard;

there is a curious rigidity about the movement of the plot which

proceeds in jerks, like a machine that requires frequent winding up. The

manuscript was submitted to a publishing firm, who, it is interesting to

remember, handed it over to their professional reader, George Meredith.

Mr. Meredith told the young author that his work was promising; and he

said it in such a way that the two men became life-long friends, there

being no more jealousy between them than existed between Tennyson and

Browning. Years later Mr. Meredith said that he regarded Mr. Hardy as

the real leader of contemporary English novelists; and the younger man

always maintained toward his literary adviser an attitude of sincere

reverence, of which his poem on the octogenarian's death was a beautiful

expression. There is something fine in the honest friendship and mutual

admiration of two giants, who cordially recognise each other above the

heads of the crowd, and who are themselves placidly unmoved by the

fierce jealousy of their partisans. In this instance, despite a total

unlikeness in literary style, there was genuine intellectual kinship.

Mr. Meredith and Mr. Hardy were both Pagans and regarded the world and

men and women from the Pagan standpoint, though the deduction in one

case was optimism and in the other pessimism. Given the premises, the

younger writer's conclusions seem more logical; and the processes of his

mind were always more orderly than those of his brilliant and irregular

senior. There is little doubt (I think) as to which of the two should

rank higher in the history of English fiction, where fineness of Art

surely counts for something. Mr. Hardy is a great novelist; whereas to

adapt a phrase that Arnold applied to Emerson, I should say that Mr.

Meredith was not a great novelist; he was a great man who wrote novels.

Immediately after the publication of _Desperate Remedies_, which seemed

to teach him, as _Endymion_ taught Keats, the highest mysteries of his

art, Mr. Hardy entered upon a period of brilliant and splendid

production. In three successive years, 1872, 1873, and 1874, he produced

three masterpieces--_Under the Greenwood Tree_, _A Pair of Blue Eyes_,

and _Far from the Madding Crowd_; followed four years later by what is,

perhaps, his greatest contribution to literature, _The Return of the

Native_. Even in literary careers that last a long time, there seem to

be golden days when the inspiration is unbalked by obstacles. It is

interesting to contemplate the lengthy row of Scott's novels, and then

to remember that _The Heart of Midlothian_, _The Bride of Lammermoor_

and _Ivanhoe_ were published in three successive years; to recall that

the same brief span covered in George Eliot's work the production of

_Scenes of Clerical Life_, _Adam Bede_, and _The Mill on the Floss_; and

one has only to compare what Mr. Kipling accomplished in 1888, 1889, and

1890 with any other triennial, to discover when he had what the

Methodists call "liberty." Mr. Hardy's career as a writer has covered

about forty years; omitting his collections of short tales, he has

written fourteen novels; from 1870 to 1880, inclusive, seven appeared;

from 1881 to 1891, five; from 1892 to 1902, two; since 1897 he has

published no novels at all. With that singular and unfortunate

perversity which makes authors proudest of their lamest offspring, Mr.

Hardy has apparently abandoned the novel for poetry and the poetic

drama. I suspect that praise of his verse is sweeter to him than praise

of his fiction; but, although his poems are interesting for their ideas,

and although we all like the huge _Dynasts_ better than we did when we

first saw it, it is a great pity from the economic point of view that

the one man who can write novels better than anybody else in the same

language should deliberately choose to write something else in which he

is at his very best only second rate. The world suffers the same kind of

economic loss (less only in degree) that it suffered when Milton spent

twenty years of his life in writing prose; and when Tolstoi forsook

novels for theology.

It is probable that one reason why Mr. Hardy quit novel-writing was the

hostile reception that greeted _Jude the Obscure_. Every great author,

except Tennyson, has been able to endure adverse criticism, whether he

hits back, like Pope and Byron, or whether he proceeds on his way in

silence. But no one has ever enjoyed or ever will enjoy

misrepresentation; and there is no doubt that the writer of _Jude_ felt

that he had been cruelly misunderstood. It is, I think, the worst novel

he has ever written, both from the moral and from the artistic point of

view; but the novelist was just as sincere in his intention as when he

wrote the earlier books. The difficulty is that something of the same

change had taken place in his work that is so noticeable in that of

Bjoernson; he had ceased to be a pure artist and had become a

propagandist. The fault that marred the splendid novel _Tess of the

D'Urbervilles_ ruined _Jude the Obscure_. When Mr. Hardy wrote on the

title-page of _Tess_ the words, "A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented," he

issued defiantly the name of a thesis which the story (great, in spite

of this) was intended to defend. To a certain extent, his interest in

the argument blinded his artistic sense; otherwise he would never have

committed the error of hanging his heroine. The mere hanging of a

heroine may not be in itself an artistic blunder, for Shakespeare hanged

Cordelia. But Mr. Hardy executed Tess because he was bound to see his

thesis through. In the prefaces to subsequent editions the author turned

on his critics, calling them "sworn discouragers of effort," a phrase

that no doubt some of them deserved; and then, like many another man who

believes in himself, he punished both critics and the public in the

Rehoboam method by issuing _Jude the Obscure_. Instead of being a

masterpiece of despair, like _The Return of the Native_, this book is a

shriek of rage. Pessimism, which had been a noble ground quality of his

earlier writings, is in _Jude_ merely hysterical and wholly

unconvincing. The author takes obvious pains to make things come out

wrong; as in melodramas and childish romances, the law of causation is

suspended in the interest of the hero's welfare. Animalism, which had

partially disfigured _Tess_, became gross and revolting in _Jude_; and

the representation of marriage and the relations between men and women,

instead of being a picture of life, resembled a caricature. It is a

matter of sincere regret that Mr. Hardy has stopped novel-writing, but

we want no more _Judes_. Didactic pessimism is not good for the novel.

_The Well-Beloved_, published in 1897, but really a revision of an

earlier tale, is in a way a triumph of Art. The plot is simply absurd,

almost as whimsical as anything in _Alice in Wonderland_. A man proposes

to a young girl and is rejected; when her daughter is grown, he proposes

to the representative of the second generation, and with the same ill

fortune. When _her_ daughter reaches maturity, he tries the third woman

in line and without success. His perseverance was equalled only by his

bad luck, as so often happens in Mr. Hardy's stories. And yet, with a

plot that would wreck any other novelist, the author constructed a

powerful and beautifully written novel. It is as though the architect

had taken a wretched plan and yet somehow contrived to erect on its

false lines a handsome building. The book has naturally added nothing to

his reputation, but as a _tour de force_ it is hard to surpass.

It is pleasant to remember that a man's opinion of his own work has

nothing to do with its final success and that his best creations cannot

be injured by his worst. Tolstoi may be ashamed of having written _Anna

Karenina_, and may insist that his sociological tracts are superior

productions, but we know better; and rejoice in his powerlessness to

efface his own masterpieces. We may honestly think that we should be

ashamed to put our own names to such stuff as _Little Dorrit_, but that

does not prevent us from admiring the splendid genius that produced

_David Copperfield_ and _Great Expectations_. Mr. Hardy may believe that

_Jude the Obscure_ represents his zenith as a novelist, and that his

poems are still greater literature; but one reading of _Jude_ suffices,

while we never tire of rereading _Far from the Madding Crowd_ and _The

Return of the Native_. Probably no publisher's announcement in the world

to-day would cause more pleasure to English-speaking people than the

announcement that Thomas Hardy was at work on a Wessex novel with

characters of the familiar kind.

For _The Dynasts_, which covers the map of Europe, transcends the sky,

and deals with world-conquerors, is not nearly so great a world-drama as

_A Pair of Blue Eyes_, that is circumscribed in a small corner of a

small island, and treats exclusively of a little group of commonplace

persons. Literature deals with a constant--human nature, which is the

same in Wessex as in Vienna. As the late Mr. Clyde Fitch used to say, it

is not the great writers that have great things happen to them; the

great things happen to the ordinary people they portray. Mr. Hardy

selected a few of the southwestern counties of England as the stage for

his prose dramas; to this locality he for the first time, in _Far from

the Madding Crowd_, gave the name Wessex, a name now wholly fictitious,

but which his creative imagination has made so real that it is

constantly and seriously spoken of as though it were English geography.

In these smiling valleys and quiet rural scenes, "while the earth keeps

up her terrible composure," the farmers and milkmaids hold us spellbound

as they struggle in awful passion. The author of the drama stands aloof,

making no effort to guide his characters from temptation, folly, and

disaster, and offering no explanation to the spectators, who are

thrilled with pity and fear. But one feels that he loves and hates his

children as we do, and that he correctly gauges their moral value. The

very narrowness of the scene increases the intensity of the play. The

rustic cackle of his bourg drowns the murmur of the world.

Mr. Hardy's knowledge of and sympathy with nature is of course obvious

to all readers, but it is none the less impressive as we once more open

books that we have read many times. There are incidentally few novelists

who repay one so richly for repeated perusals. He seems as inexhaustible

as nature herself, and he grows stale no faster than the repetition of

the seasons. It is perhaps rather curious that a man who finds nature so

absolutely inexorable and indifferent to human suffering should love her

so well. But every man must love something greater than himself, and as

Mr. Hardy had no God, he has drawn close to the world of trees, plains,

and rivers. His intimacy with nature is almost uncanny. Nature is not

merely a background in his stories, it is often an active agent. There

are striking characters in _The Return of the Native_, but the greatest

character in the book is Egdon Heath. The opening chapter, which gives

the famous picture of the Heath, is like an overture to a great

music-drama. The _Heath-motif_ is repeated again and again in the story.

It has a personality of its own, and affects the fortunes and the hearts

of all human beings who dwell in its proximity. If one stands to-day on

the edge of this Heath at the twilight hour, just at the moment when

Darkness is conquering Light--the moment chosen by Mr. Hardy for the

first chapter--one realises its significance and its possibilities. In

_Tess of the D'Urbervilles_ the intercourse between man and nature is

set forth with amazing power. The different seasons act as chorus to the

human tragedy. In _The Woodlanders_ the trees seem like separate

individualities. To me a tree has become a different thing since I first

read this particular novel.

Even before he took up the study of architecture, Mr. Hardy's

unconscious training as a novelist began. When he was a small boy, the

Dorchester girls found him useful in a way that recalls the services of

that reliable child, Samuel Richardson. These village maids, in their

various love-affairs, which necessitated a large amount of private

correspondence, employed young Hardy as amanuensis. He did not, like his

great predecessor, compose their epistles; but he held the pen, and

faithfully recorded the inspiration of Love, as it flowed warm from the

lips of passionate youth. In this manner, the almost sexless boy was

enabled to look clear-eyed into the very heart of palpitating young

womanhood, and to express accurately its most gentle and most stormy

emotions; just as the white voice of a choir-child repeats with

precision the thrilling notes of religious passion. These early

experiences were undoubtedly of the highest value in later years;

indeed, as the boy grew a little older, it is probable that the

impression deepened. Mr. Hardy is fond of depicting the vague,

half-conscious longing of a boy to be near a beautiful woman; everyone

will remember the contract between Eustacia and her youthful admirer, by

which he was to hold her hand for a stipulated number of minutes. Mr.

Hardy's women are full of tenderness and full of caprice; and whatever

feminine readers may think of them, they are usually irresistible to the

masculine mind. It has been said, indeed, that he is primarily a man's

novelist, as Mrs. Ward is perhaps a woman's; he does not represent his

women as marvels of intellectual splendour, or in queenly domination

over the society in which they move. They are more apt to be the

victims of their own affectionate hearts. One female reader, exasperated

at this succession of portraits, wrote on the margin of one of Mr.

Hardy's novels that she took from a circulating library, "Oh, how I

_hate_ Thomas Hardy!" This is an interesting gloss, even if we do not

add meanly that it bears witness to the truth of the picture. Elfride,

Bathsheba, Eustacia, Lady Constantine, Marty South, and Tess are of

varied social rank and wealth; but they are all alike in humble

prostration before the man they love. Mr. Hardy takes particular

pleasure in representing them as swayed by sudden and constantly

changing caprices; one has only to recall the charming Bathsheba

Everdene, and her various attitudes toward the three men who admire

her--Troy, Boldwood, and Gabriel Oak. Mr. Hardy's heroines change their

minds oftener than they change their clothes; but in whatever material

or mental presentment, they never lack attraction. And they all resemble

their maker in one respect; at heart every one of them is a Pagan. They

vary greatly in constancy and in general strength of character; but it

is human passion, and not religion, that is the mainspring of their

lives. He has never drawn a truly spiritual woman, like Browning's

Pompilia.

His best men, from the moral point of view, are closest to the soil.

Gabriel Oak, in _Far from the Madding Crowd_, and Venn, in _The Return

of the Native_, are, on the whole, his noblest characters. Oak is a

shepherd and Venn is a reddleman; their sincerity, charity, and fine

sense of honour have never been injured by what is called polite

society. And Mr. Hardy, the stingiest author toward his characters, has

not entirely withheld reward from these two. Henry Knight and Angel

Clare, who have whatever advantages civilisation is supposed to give,

are certainly not villains; they are men of the loftiest ideals; but if

each had been a deliberate black-hearted villain, he could not have

treated the innocent woman who loved him with more ugly cruelty.

Compared with Oak and Venn, this precious pair of prigs are seen to have

only the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees; a righteousness

that is of little help in the cruel emergencies of life. Along with them

must stand Clym Yeobright, another slave to moral theory, who quite

naturally ends his days as an itinerant preacher. The real villains in

Mr. Hardy's novels, Sergeant Troy, young Dare, and Alec D'Urberville,

seem the least natural and the most machine-made of all his characters.

Mr. Hardy's pessimism is a picturesque and splendid contribution to

modern fiction. We should be as grateful for it in this field as we are

to Schopenhauer in the domain of metaphysics. I am no pessimist myself,

but I had rather read Schopenhauer than all the rest of the

philosophers put together, Plato alone excepted. The pessimism of Mr.

Hardy resembles that of Schopenhauer in being absolutely thorough and

absolutely candid; it makes the world as darkly superb and as terribly

interesting as a Greek drama. It is wholly worth while to get this point

of view; and if in practical life one does not really believe in it, it

is capable of yielding much pleasure. After finishing one of Mr. Hardy's

novels, one has all the delight of waking from an impressive but

horrible dream, and feeling through the dissolving vision the real

friendliness of the good old earth. It is like coming home from an

adequate performance of _King Lear_, which we would not have missed for

anything. There are so many make-believe pessimists, so many whose

pessimism is a sham and a pose, which will not stand for a moment in a

real crisis, that we cannot withhold admiration for such pessimism as

Mr. Hardy's, which is fundamental and sincere. To him the Christian

religion and what we call the grace of God have not the slightest shade

of meaning; he is as absolute a Pagan as though he had written four

thousand years before Christ. This is something almost refreshing,

because it is so entirely different from the hypocrisy and cant, the

pretence of pessimism, so familiar to us in the works of modern writers;

and so inconsistent with their daily life. Mr. Hardy's pessimism is the

one deep-seated conviction of his whole intellectual process.

I once saw a print of a cartoon drawn by a contemporary Dresden artist,

Herr Sascha Schneider. It was called "The Helplessness of Man against

Destiny." We see a quite naked man, standing with his back to us; his

head is bowed in hopeless resignation; heavy manacles are about his

wrists, to which chains are attached, that lead to some fastening in the

ground. Directly before him, with hideous hands, that now almost

entirely surround the little circle where he stands in dejection, crawls

flatly toward him a prodigious, shapeless monster, with his horrid

narrow eyes fixed on his defenceless human prey. And the man is so

conscious of his tether, that even in the very presence of the

unspeakably awful object, _the chains hang loose_! He may have tried

them once, but he has since given up. The monster is Destiny; and the

real meaning of the picture is seen in the eyes, nose, and mouth of the

loathsome beast. There is not only no sympathy and no intelligence

there; there is an expression far more terrible than the evident lust to

devour; there is plainly the _sense of humour_ shown on this hideous

face. The contrast between the limitless strength of the monster and the

utter weakness of the man, flavours the stupidity of Destiny with the

zest of humour.

Now this is a correct picture of life as Mr. Hardy sees it. His God is a

kind of insane child, who cackles foolishly as he destroys the most

precious objects. Some years ago I met a man entirely blind. He said

that early in life he had lost the sight of one eye by an accident; and

that years later, as he held a little child on his lap, the infant, in

rare good humour, playfully poked the point of a pair of scissors into

the other, thus destroying his sight for ever. So long an interval had

elapsed since this second and final catastrophe, that the man spoke of

it without the slightest excitement or resentment. The child with the

scissors might well represent Hardy's conception of God. Destiny is

whimsical, rather than definitely malicious; for Destiny has not

sufficient intelligence even to be systematically bad. We smile at

Caliban's natural theology, as he composes his treatise on Setebos; but

his God is the same who disposes of man's proposals in the stories of

our novelist.

"In which feat, if his leg snapped, brittle clay,

And he lay stupid-like,--why, I should laugh;

And if he, spying me, should fall to weep,

Beseech me to be good, repair his wrong,

Bid his poor leg smart less or grow again,--

Well, as the chance were, this might take or else

Not take my fancy....

'Thinketh, such shows nor right nor wrong in Him,

Nor kind, nor cruel: He is strong and Lord."

Mr. Hardy believes that, morally, men and women are immensely superior

to God; for all the good qualities that we attribute to Him in prayer

are human, not divine. He in his loneliness is totally devoid of the

sense of right and wrong, and knows neither justice nor mercy. His poem

_New Year's Eve_[3] clearly expresses his theology.

[3] See Appendix.

Mr. Hardy's pessimism is not in the least personal, nor has it risen

from any sorrow or disappointment in his own life. It is both

philosophic and temperamental. He cannot see nature in any other way. To

venture a guess, I think his pessimism is mainly caused by his deep,

manly tenderness for all forms of human and animal life and by an almost

abnormal sympathy. His intense love for bird and beast is well known;

many a stray cat and hurt dog have found in him a protector and a

refuge. He firmly believes that the sport of shooting is wicked, and he

has repeatedly joined in practical measures to waken the public

conscience on this subject. As a spectator of human history, he sees

life as a vast tragedy, with men and women emerging from nothingness,

suffering acute physical and mental sorrow, and then passing into

nothingness again. To his sympathetic mind, the creed of optimism is a

ribald insult to the pain of humanity and devout piety merely absurd. To

hear these suffering men and women utter prayers of devotion and sing

hymns of adoration to the Power whence comes all their anguish is to him

a veritable abdication of reason and common sense. God simply does not

deserve it, and he for one will have the courage to say so. He will not

stand by and see humanity submit so tamely to so heartless a tyrant.

For, although Mr. Hardy is a pessimist, he has not the least tincture of

cynicism. If one analyses his novels carefully, one will see that he

seldom shows scorn for his characters; his contempt is almost

exclusively devoted to God. Sometimes the evil fate that his characters

suffer is caused by the very composition of their mind, as is seen in _A

Pair of Blue Eyes_; again it is no positive human agency, but rather an

AEschylean conception of hidden forces, as in _The Return of the Native_;

but in neither case is humanity to blame.

This pessimism has one curious effect that adds greatly to the reader's

interest when he takes up an hitherto unread novel by our author. The

majority of works of fiction end happily; indeed, many are so badly

written that any ending cannot be considered unfortunate. But with most

novelists we have a sense of security. We know that, no matter what

difficulties the hero and heroine may encounter, the unseen hand of

their maker will guide them eventually to paths of pleasantness and

peace. Mr. Hardy inspires no such confidence. In reading Trollope, one

smiles at a cloud of danger, knowing it will soon pass over; but after

reading _A Pair of Blue Eyes_, or _Tess_, one follows the fortunes of

young Somerset in _A Laodicean_ with constant fluctuation of faint hope

and real terror; for we know that with Mr. Hardy the worst may happen at

any moment.

However dark may be his conception of life, Mr. Hardy's sense of humour

is unexcelled by his contemporaries in its subtlety of feeling and charm

of expression. His rustics, who have long received and deserved the

epithet "Shakespearian," arouse in every reader harmless and wholesome

delight. The shadow of the tragedy lifts in these wonderful pages, for

Mr. Hardy's laughter reminds one of what Carlyle said of Shakespeare's:

it is like sunshine on the deep sea. The childlike sincerity of these

shepherd farmers, the candour of their repartee and their appraisal of

gentle-folk are as irresistible as their patience and equable temper.

Everyone in the community seems to find his proper mental and moral

level. And their infrequent fits of irritation are as pleasant as their

more solemn moods. We can all sympathise (I hope) with the despair of

Joseph Poorgrass: "I was sitting at home looking for Ephesians and says

I to myself, 'Tis nothing but Corinthians and Thessalonians in this

danged Testament!"

III

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS

Born in a little village in Ohio over seventy years ago, and growing up

with small Latin and less Greek, Mr. Howells may fairly be called a

self-educated man. Just why the epithet "self-made" should be applied to

those non-college-graduates who succeed in business, and withheld from

those who succeed in poetry and fiction, seems not entirely clear.

Perhaps it is tacitly assumed that those who become captains of industry

achieve prominence without divine assistance; whereas men of letters,

with or without early advantages, and whether grateful or not, have

unconscious communication with hidden forces. Be this as it may, the boy

Howells had little schooling and no college. All the public institutions

in the world, however, are but a poor makeshift in the absence of good

home training; and the future novelist's father was the right sort of

man and had the right sort of occupation to stimulate a clever and

ambitious son. The elder Howells was the editor of a country newspaper,

which, like a country doctor, makes up in variety of information what it

loses in spread of influence. The boy was a compositor before he was a

composer, as plenty of literary men since Richardson have been; he

helped to set up lyrics, news items, local gossip, the funny column, and

patent medicine advertisements. From mechanical he passed to original

work, both in his father's office and in other sanctums about the state;

sometimes acting not only as contributor, but "moulding public opinion"

from the editor's chair. And indeed he has never entirely stepped out of

the editorial role. During an amazingly busy life as novelist,

dramatist, poet, and foreign diplomat, Mr. Howells has acted as

editorial writer on the _Nation_, the _Atlantic_, the _Cosmopolitan

Magazine_, and _Harper's Monthly_. I think he would sometimes be

appalled at the prodigious amount of merely "timely" articles that he

has written, were it not for the fact that during his long career he has

never published a single line of which he need feel ashamed.

Type-setters and printers are commonly men of ideas, who have

interesting minds, and are good to talk with. Mr. Howells was certainly

no exception to the rule, and to the foundation of his early education

as a compositor and journalist he added four years of study of the

Italian language and literature in the pleasant environment of Venice.

He has always been a man of peace; and it is interesting to remember

that during the four years of tumultuous and bloody civil war, Mr.

Howells was serving his country as a United States Consul in Italy, and

at the same time preparing to add to the kind of fame she most sorely

needs. The "woman-country" never meant to him what it signified to

Browning; but it has always been an inspiration, and he would have been

a different person without this foreign influence. Besides some critical

and scholarly works on Italian literature, much of his subsequent

writing has been done beyond the Alps, and the plot of one of his

foremost novels develops on the streets of Florence. And in another and

wholly delightful story, we have the keen pleasure of seeing Italian

life and society through the eyes of Lydia Blood.

He formally began a literary career by the composition of a volume of

poems, as Blackmore, Hardy, Meredith, and many other novelists have seen

fit to do. He is not widely known as a poet to-day, though all his life

he has written more or less verse without achieving distinction; for he

is essentially a _prosateur_. In 1872, twelve years after the appearance

of his book of poems, came his first successful novel, _Their Wedding

Journey_. This story is written in the style that is responsible for

its author's fame and popularity; it is thoroughly typical of the whole

first part of his novel-production. It has that quiet stingless humour,

clever dialogue, and wholesome charm, that all readers of Mr. Howells

associate with his name. In other words, it is a clear manifestation of

his own personality. Now as to the permanent value and final place in

literature of these American novels, critics may differ; but there can

be only one opinion of the man who wrote them.

The personality of Mr. Howells, as shown both in his objective novels

and in his subjective literary confessions, is one that irresistibly

commands our highest respect and our warmest affection. A simple,

democratic, unaffected, modest, kindly, humorous, healthy soul, with a

rare combination of rugged virility and extreme refinement. It is

exceedingly fortunate for America that such a man has for so many years

by common consent, at home and abroad, been regarded as the Dean of

American Letters. He has had more influence on the output of fiction in

America than any other living man. This influence has been entirely

wholesome, from the standpoint of both morals and Art. He has

consistently stood for Reticent Realism. He has ridiculed what he is

fond of calling "romantic rot," and his own novels have been a silent

but emphatic protest against "mentioning the unmentionable." Every now

and then there has risen a violent revolt against his leadership, the

latest outspoken attack coming from a novelist of distinction, Gertrude

Atherton. In the year 1907 she relieved her mind by declaring that Mr.

Howells has been and is a writer for boarding-school misses; that he has

never penetrated deeply into life; and that not only has his own

timidity prevented him from courageously revealing the hearts of men and

women, but that his position of power and influence has cast a blight on

American fiction. Thanks to him, she insists, American novels are pale

and colourless productions, and are known the world over for their

tameness and insipidity. Mrs. Atherton has been supported in this revolt

by many very young literary aspirants, who lack her wisdom and her

experience, and whose chief dislike of Mr. Howells, when finally

analysed, seems to be directed against his intense ethical earnestness.

For, at heart, Mr. Howells resembles most Anglo-Saxon novelists in being

a moralist.

It is true that American novelists and playwrights are at one great

disadvantage as compared with contemporary Continental writers. Owing to

the public conscience, they are compelled to work in a limited field.

The things that we leave to medical specialists and to alienists are

staple subject-matter in high-class French and German fiction. In a

European dictionary there is no such word as "reserve." French writers

like Brieux protest that American conceptions of French morals are based

on the reading of French books whose authors have no standing in Paris,

and whose very names are unknown to their countrymen. But this protest

fades before facts. The facts are that Parisian novelists and dramatists

of the highest literary and social distinction, who are awarded national

prizes, admitted to the French Academy, and who receive all sorts of

public honours, write and publish books, which, if produced in the

United States by an American, would bar him from the houses and from the

society of many decent people, and might cause his arrest. At any rate,

he would be regarded as a criminal rather than as a hero. I have in mind

plays by Donnay, recently elected to the French Academy; plays by Capus,

who stands high in public regard; novels by Regnier, who has received

all sorts of honours. These men are certainly not fourth- and

fifth-class writers; they are thoroughly representative of Parisian

literary taste. Regnier has not hesitated to write, and the editors have

not hesitated to accept, for the periodical _L'Illustration_, which goes

into family circles everywhere, a novel that could not possibly be

published in any respectable magazine in America. I do not say that

Americans are one peg higher in morality than Frenchmen; it may be that

we are hypocrites, and that the French are models of virtue; but the

difference in moral tone between the average American play or novel and

that produced in Paris is simply enormous.

The modern German novel is no better than the French. Last night I

finished reading Sudermann's long and powerful story, _Das hohe Lied_. I

could not help thinking how entirely different it is in its

subject-matter, in its characters, in its scenes, and in its atmosphere,

from the average American novel. Now of course the subject that arouses

the most instant interest from all classes of people, both young and

old, innocent and guilty, is the subject of sex. A large number of

modern successful French and German novels and plays contain no other

matter of any real importance--and would be intolerably dull were it not

for their dealing with sexual crimes. The Continental writer is barred

by no restraint; when he has nothing to say, as is very often the case,

he simply plays his trump card. The American, however, is not permitted

to penetrate beyond the bounds of decency; which shuts him off from the

chief field where European writers dwell. He must somehow make his novel

interesting to his readers, just as a man is expected to make himself

interesting in social conversation, without recourse to pruriency or

obscenity.

Leaving out of debate for a moment the moral aspect of Art, is it

necessarily true that novels which plunge freely into sex questions are

a more faithful representation of life than those that observe the

limits of good taste? I think not. The men and women in many Continental

stories have apparently nothing to do except to gratify their passions.

All the thousand and one details that make up the daily routine of the

average person are sacrificed to emphasise one thing; but this, even in

most degraded Sybarites, would be only a part of their actual activity.

I believe that _A Modern Instance_ is just as true to life as _Bel-Ami_.

It would really be a misfortune if Mrs. Atherton could have her way; for

then American novelists would copy the faults of European writers

instead of their virtues. The reason why French plays and French novels

are generally superior to American is not because they are indecent; and

we shall never raise our standard merely by copying foreign immorality.

The superiority of the French is an intellectual and artistic

superiority; they excel us in literary style. If we are to imitate them,

let us imitate their virtues and not their defects, even though the task

in this case be infinitely more difficult.

And, granting what Mrs. Atherton says, that the reticence of American

fiction is owing largely to the influence of Mr. Howells, have we not

every reason to be grateful to him? Has not the modern novel a

tremendous influence in education, and do we really wish to see young

men and women, boys and girls, reading stories that deal mainly with

sex? Is it well that they should abandon Dickens, Thackeray, and

Stevenson, for the novel in vogue on the Continent? It is often said

that French fiction is intended only for seasoned readers, and is

carefully kept from youth. But this is gammon, and should deceive only

the grossly ignorant. As if anything nowadays could be kept from youth!

With the exception of girls who are very strictly brought up, young

people in Europe have the utmost freedom in reading. In one of Regnier's

novels, which purports to be autobiographical, the favourite bedside

book of the boy in his teens is _Mademoiselle de Maupin_. In a secret

ballot vote recently taken by a Russian periodical, to discover who are

the most popular novelists with high-school boys and girls in Russia, it

appeared that of all foreign writers Guy de Maupassant stood first. Is

this really a desirable state of affairs? Suppose it be true, as it

probably is, that the average Russian, German, or French boy of

seventeen is intellectually more mature than his English or American

contemporary--are we willing to make the physical and moral sacrifice

for the merely mental advance? Is it not better that our boys should be

playing football and reading _Treasure Island_, than that they should

be spending their leisure hours in the manner described by Regnier?

Mr. Howells's creed in Art is perhaps more open to criticism than his

creed in Ethics. His artistic creed is narrow, strict, and definite. He

has expressed it in his essays, and exemplified it in his novels. His

two doctrinal works, _Criticism and Fiction_, and _My Literary

Passions_, resemble Zola's _Le Roman Experimental_ in dogmatic

limitation. The creed of Mr. Howells is realism, which he has not only

faithfully followed in his creative work, but which he uses as a

standard by which to measure the value of other novelists, both living

and dead. As genius always refuses to be measured by any standard, and

usually defies classification, Mr. Howells's literary estimates of other

men's work are far more valuable as self-revelation than as adequate

appraisal. Indeed, some of his criticisms seem bizarre. Where works of

fiction do not run counter to his literary dogmas, he is abundantly

sympathetic and more than generous; many a struggling young writer has

cause to bless him for powerful assistance; apparently there has never

been one grain of envy, jealousy, or meanness in the mind of our

American dean. But, broadly speaking, Mr. Howells has not the true

critical mind, which places itself for the moment in the mental

attitude of the author criticised; he is primarily a creative rather

than a critical writer. Here he is in curious opposition to his friend

and contemporary, Henry James. Mr. James is a natural-born critic, one

of the best America has ever produced. His essay on Balzac was a

masterpiece. His intellectual power is far more critical than creative;

as a novelist, he seems quite inferior to Mr. Howells. And his best

story, the little sketch, _Daisy Miller_, was properly called by its

author a "study."

Mr. Howells's literary career has two rather definite periods. The break

was caused largely by the influence of Tolstoi. The earlier novels are

more purely artistic; they are accurate representations of American

characters, for the most part joyous in mood, full of genuine humour,

and natural charm. A story absolutely expressive of the author as we

used to know him is _The Lady of the Aroostook_. As a sympathetic and

delightful portrayal of a New England country girl, this book is one of

his best productions. The voyage across the Atlantic; the surprise

caused by Lydia's name and appearance, and homely conversation. "I want

to know!" cried Lydia. The second surprise caused by her splendid

singing voice. The third surprise caused to the sophisticated young

gentleman by discovering that he was in love with her. His rapture at

his glorious good-fortune in saving the drunken wretch from drowning,

thus acting as hero before his lady's eyes; her virginal experiences in

Italy; the final happy consummation--all this is in Mr. Howells's best

vein, the Howells of thirty years ago. The story is full of observation,

cerebration, and human affection. As Professor Beers has remarked, if

Mr. Howells knows his countrymen no more intimately than does Henry

James, at least he loves them better. This charming novel was rapidly

followed in the next few years by a succession of books that are at once

good to read, and of permanent value as reflections of American life,

manners, and morals. These were _A Modern Instance_, _A Woman's Reason_,

_The Rise of Silas Lapham_, and _Indian Summer_; making a literary

harvest of which not only their author, but all Americans, have reason

to be justly proud.

Somewhere along in the eighties Mr. Howells came fully within the grasp

of the mighty influence of Tolstoi, an influence, which, no matter how

beneficial in certain ways, has not been an unmixed blessing on his

foreign disciples. What the American owes to the great Russian, and how

warm is his gratitude therefor, any one may see for himself by reading

_My Literary Passions_. It is indeed difficult to praise the maker of

_Anna Karenina_ too highly; but nobody wanted Mr. Howells to become a

lesser Tolstoi. When we wish to read Tolstoi, we know where to find

him; we wish Mr. Howells to remain his own self, shrewdly observant, and

kindly humorous. The latter novels of the American show the same kind of

change that took place in Bjoernson, that has also characterised Bourget;

it is the partial abandonment of the novel as an art form, and its

employment as a social, political, or religious tract. Mr. Howells's

saving sense of humour has kept him from dull extremes; but when _A

Hazard of New Fortunes_ appeared, we knew that there was more in the

title than the writer intended; our old friend had put on Saul's armour.

As has been suggested above, this change was not entirely an individual

one; it was symptomatic of the development of the modern novel all over

the world. But in this instance it seemed particularly regrettable. We

have our fill of strikes and labour troubles in the daily newspaper,

without going to our novelist for them. With one exception, it is

probable that not a single one of Mr. Howells's novels published during

the last twenty years is as good, from the artistic and literary point

of view, as the admirable work he produced before 1889. The exception is

_The Kentons_ (1902), in which he returned to his earlier manner, in a

triumphant way that showed he had not lost his skill. Indeed, there is

no trace of decay in the other books of his late years; there is merely

a loss of charm.

I think that _Indian Summer_, despite its immense popularity at the time

of publication, has never received the high praise it really deserves.

It is written in a positive glow of artistic creation. I believe that of

all its author's works, it is the one whose composition he most keenly

enjoyed. The conversations--always a great feature of his stories--are

immensely clever; I suspect that as he wrote them he was often agreeably

surprised at his own inspiration. The three characters, the middle-aged

man and woman, and the romantic young girl, are admirably set off; no

one has ever better shown the fact that it is quite possible for one to

imagine oneself in love when really one is fancy-free. The delicate

shades of jealousy in the intimate talks between the two women are

exquisitely done; the experience of the grown woman contrasting finely

with the imagination of the young girl. The difference between a man of

forty and a woman of twenty, shown here not in heavy tragedy, but in the

innumerable, convincing details of daily human intercourse, is finely

emphasised; and we can feel the great relief of both when the engagement

tie is broken. This story in its way is a masterpiece; and anyone who

lacks enthusiasm for its author ought to read it again.

His most powerful novel is probably _A Modern Instance_. This, like many

American and English fictions, first appeared in serial form--a fact

that should be known before one indulges in criticism. The old objection

to this method was that it led the writer to attempt to end each section

dramatically, leaving the reader with a sharp appetite for more. The

movement of the narrative, when the book was finally published as a

whole, resembled a series of jumps. Someone has said, that even so fine

a novel as _Far from the Madding Crowd_ was a succession of brilliant

leaps; whether or not this was caused by its original serial printing, I

do not know. This difficulty would never appear in Mr. Howells, at all

events; because his stories do not impress us by their special dramatic

scenes, or supreme moments, but rather by their completeness. The other

objection, however, has some force here--the fact that details may be

extended beyond their artistic proportion, in a manner that does not

militate against the separate instalments, but is seen to mar the book

as a whole. The logging camp incident in _A Modern Instance_ is

prolonged to a fault. Proportion is sacrificed to realism. From this

point of view, it is well to remember that _The Newcomes_ appeared in

single numbers, whereas _Henry Esmond_ was published originally as a

complete work.

But this slight defect is more than atoned for by the power shown in the

depiction of character. This is a study of degeneration, not dealing

with remote characters in far-off historical situations, but brought

home to our very doors. One feels that this dreadful fate might happen

to one's neighbours--might happen to oneself. It seems to me a greater

book in every way than _Romola_, though I am not prepared to say that

Mr. Howells is a greater novelist than George Eliot. There is all the

difference between Tito Melema and Bartley Hubbard that there is between

a fancy picture and a portrait. Mr. Howells is fond of using

Shakespearian quotations as titles; witness _The Counterfeit

Presentment_, _The Undiscovered Country_, _The Quality of Mercy_, and _A

Modern Instance_. Now the word "modern," as every student of Shakespeare

knows, means in the poet's works almost the opposite of what it

signifies to-day. "Full of wise saws and modern instances" is equivalent

to saying prosaically, "full of sententious proverbs and old, trite

illustrations." In the Shakespearian sense, Mr. Howells's title might be

translated "A Familiar Example"--for it is not only a story of modern

American life, it portrays what is unfortunately an instance all too

familiar. Bartley Hubbard is the typical representative of the "smart"

young American. He is not in the least odious when we first make his

acquaintance. His skill in address and in adaptation to society assure

his instant popularity; and at heart he is a good fellow, quite unlike

a designing villain. He would rather do right than do wrong, provided

both are equally convenient. He simply follows the line of least

resistance. Nor is he by nature a Bohemian; he loves Marcia, is proud of

her fresh beauty, and enjoys domestic life. Then he has the fascinating

quality of true humour. His conversations with his wife, when he is free

from worry, are exceedingly attractive to the impersonal listener. He is

just like thousands of clever young American journalists--quick-witted,

enterprising, energetic, with a sure nose for news; there is, in fact,

only one thing the matter with Bartley. Although, when life is flowing

evenly, he does not realise his deficiency, he actually has at heart no

moral principle, no ethical sense, no honour. The career of such a man

will depend entirely upon circumstances; because his standard of virtue

is not where it should be, within his own mind, but without. Like many

other men, he can resist anything but temptation. Whether he will become

a good citizen or a blackleg, depends not in the least upon himself, but

wholly upon the events through which he moves. Had he married exactly

the right sort of girl, and had some rich uncle left the young couple a

fortune, it is probable that neither his friends, nor his wife, nor even

he himself, would have guessed at his capacity for evil. He would have

remained popular in the community, and died both lamented and

respected. But the difficulty is that he did not marry wisely, and he

subsequently became short of cash. Now, as some writer has said, it does

not matter so much whether a man marries with wisdom or the reverse, nor

whether he behaves in other emergencies with prudence or folly; what

really matters is how he behaves himself _after_ the marriage, or after

any other crisis where he may have chosen foolishly. But Bartley, like

many other easy-going youths, was no man for adverse circumstances.

Almost imperceptibly at first his degeneration begins; his handsome

figure shows a touch of grossness; the refinement in his face becomes

blurred; drinking ceases to be a pleasure, and becomes a habit.

Meanwhile, as what he calls his bad luck increases, quarrels with his

wife become more frequent; try as he will, there is always a sheaf of

unpaid bills at the end of the month; his home loses its charm. The

mental and spiritual decline of the man is shown repulsively by his

physical appearance. No one who has read the book can possibly forget

his broad back as he sits in the courtroom, and the horrible ring of fat

that hangs over his collar. The devil has done his work with such

technique that Bartley as we first see him, and Bartley as we last see

him, seem to be two utterly different and distinct persons and

personalities; it is with an irrepressible shudder that we recall the

time when this coarse, fat sot was a slender, graceful young man, who

charmed all acquaintances by his ease of manner and winsome

conversation. And yet, as one looks back over his life, every stage in

the transition is clear, logical, and wholly natural.

From another point of view this novel is a study of the passion of

jealousy. No other American novel, so far as I know, has given so

accurate a picture of the gradual and subtle poisoning produced by this

emotion, and only one American play,--Clyde Fitch's thoughtful and

powerful drama, _The Girl with the Green Eyes_. It is curious that

jealousy, so sinister and terrible in its effects on character, should

usually appear on the stage and in fiction as comic. It is seldom

employed as a leading motive in tragedy, though Shakespeare showed its

possibilities; but one frequently sees it in broad farce. Of all the

passions, there is none which has less mirth than jealousy. It is

fundamentally tragic; and in _A Modern Instance_, we see the evil

transformation it works in Marcia, and its force in accelerating her

husband's degeneration. Marcia is an example of the wish of Keats--she

lives a life of sensations rather than of thoughts; and jealousy can be

conquered only by mental power, never by emotional. Marcia has no

intellectual resources; her love for her husband is her whole existence.

She has no more mind than many another American country girl who comes

home from boarding-school. As one critic has pointed out, "she has not

yet emerged from the elemental condition of womanhood." Jealousy is, of

course, an "animal quality," and Marcia, without knowing it, is simply a

tamed, pretty, affectionate young animal. Her jealousy is entirely

without foundation, but it causes her the most excruciating torment, and

constantly widens the breach between herself and the man she loves. If

she had only married Halleck! She would never have been jealous with

him. But jealousy is like an ugly weed in a beautiful garden; it exists

only where there is love. And a girl like Marcia could never have

returned the love of a stodgy man like Halleck. One cannot help asking

three vain questions as one contemplates the ruins of her happiness and

sees the cause. If she had never met Bartley, and had married Halleck,

would she have been better off? are we to understand that she is finally

saved by Halleck? and if so, what is the nature of her salvation?

The old sceptical lawyer, Marcia's father, is one of the most convincing

characters that Mr. Howells has ever drawn. Those who have lived in New

England know this man, for they have seen him often. He is shrewd,

silent, practical, undemonstrative, yet his unspoken love for his

daughter is almost terrible in its intensity, and finally brings him to

the grave. Although he admires young Bartley's cleverness, he would have

admired him more had he been less clever. He has a sure instinct against

the young man from the start, and knows there can be only one outcome of

such a marriage; because he is better acquainted with the real character

of husband and wife than they are with themselves. Squire Gaylord is a

person of whose creation any novelist in the history of fiction might be

proud.

When _A Modern Instance_ was first published, a contemporary review

called it "a book that all praise but none like." I imagine that the

unpleasant sensations it awakens in every reader are like those roused

by Mr. Barrie's _Sentimental Tommy_. The picture is simply too faithful

to be agreeable. Everyone beholds his own faults and tendencies clearly

portrayed, and the result is quite other than reassuring. The book finds

us all at home. But, as Gogol, the great Russian, used to say, quoting

an old Slavonic proverb, "We must not blame the mirror if the face looks

ugly."

It is both instructive and entertaining to try the effect of this novel

on a representative group of American college undergraduates. Those who

had lived in New England villages, and were familiar with the scenes

described, were loud in their praises of the background, and of the

Gaylord family. One young man remarked--he was at Yale--"I know a young

journalist who was last year at Harvard, who is going to the devil in

very much the same way." Another said, with an experience hardly

consonant with his years, that he had known women just as jealous as

Marcia. Most of them, however, believed that her jealousy was grossly

exaggerated; it looks so like folly to those yet untouched by the

passion of love. Another truthful and modest youth said pathetically, "I

am too young to appreciate this book." Still another remarked with rare

lucidity and definiteness of penetration, "In reading this story somehow

something struck me unfavourably." Minor improbabilities in the novel

produced the greatest shock--the hot-scotch episode seemed quite

impossible, and Mr. Howells was thought to be a poor judge of the

effects of whiskey. But the criticism I enjoyed most came from the

undergraduate who said in all sincerity, "I think this is a very good

book for young ladies to read before getting married." So indeed it is.

In the year 1902, by the publication of _The Kentons_, Mr. Howells gave

us a most delightful surprise. It was like the return of an old friend

from a far journey. In literature it was as though Bjoernson should

publish a story like _A Happy Boy_, or as though Mr. Hardy should give

us a tale like _Under the Greenwood Tree_. _The Kentons_ is a thoroughly

charming international novel, containing the pleasant adventures of an

Ohio family on the ocean liner and in Europe, written in the _Aroostook_

style, sparkling with humour, and rich in sympathy and tenderness.

Political, social, and ethical problems are conspicuously absent, and

the only material used by the writer is human nature. This is one of the

best books he has ever written; it has all the charm of _Their Wedding

Journey_, plus the wisdom and observation that come only by years. It is

wholesome, healthy, realistic; a thoroughly representative American

novel from a master's hand. In a French _roman_, Bittredge would of

course have been a libertine, and one of the girls ruined by him. In

_The Kentons_, he is merely _fresh_, and though he causes some trouble,

everybody in the end is better off for the experience. Mr. Howells seems

especially to dislike _Frechheit_ in young men, and he has made the

vulgarity and assurance of Bittredge both offensive and absurd. We have

too many Bittredges in the United States; and some of them do not lose

their bittredgidity with advancing years.

The five members of the Kenton family are wonderfully well drawn, and

are just such people as we fortunately meet every day. The purity and

sweetness of married and family life are beautifully exemplified here;

they are exactly what we see in thousands of American homes, and

constitute the real answer to modern attacks on the conjugal relation.

The judge and his wife are two companions, growing old together in

simplicity and innocence, happy in the truest sense--loving each other

far more in age than in youth, which is perfectly natural in life if not

in fiction; because every day they become more necessary to each other

and have common interests extending over many years. The scene in their

bedroom, as they talk together before slumber, while the old Judge winds

up his watch, is a veritable triumph of Art.

The younger daughter Lottie is a vivid portrait of the typical American

high-school girl, slangy, superficial, flirtatious, not quite vulgar,

and in every emergency with young men fully capable of taking care of

herself. After a round of joyous, heart-free, and innocent familiarities

with various youthful admirers, she finally becomes an admirable wife

and housekeeper. Her sister Ellen is of an opposite temperament, pale,

slight, and non-athletic. She is entirely different from the Booth

Tarkington or Richard Harding Davis heroine, and in her purity,

delicacy, and refinement, takes us back to old-fashioned fiction. As a

spectator on the steamer says of her, "that pale girl is adorable." In

her shyness and extraordinary loveliness she reminds us of Turgenev's

spiritual Lisa. The scene in the night, where her young brother steals

to her bed and pours into her sympathetic ears all the troubled passion

and sorrow, all the embarrassment and suffering of his sensitive boy's

heart, is exceedingly beautiful and tender. He knows _she_ will

understand. And at last it is Ellen, and not Lottie, who becomes the

fashionable, aristocratic, New York woman--preserving in her wealthy

environment all the fruits of the spirit.

Boyne, the small boy, the "kid brother," is a fine illustration of the

enthusiasm for humanity so characteristic of Mr. Howells. It is

instructive to compare this little man with the young brother of Daisy

Miller. Both are at the age most trying to their elders, and both are

faithfully portrayed; but Randolph C. Miller is made particularly

obnoxious, even odious, while one cannot help loving Boyne. The

difference is that one is drawn with the finger of scorn and the other

with the insight of sympathy. Mr. Howells calls Boyne "a mass of

helpless sweetness though he did not know it." His romantic love for the

young queen of Holland and the burning mortification he suffers thereby,

are sufficiently easy to understand. The contrast between the high

seriousness with which he takes himself, and the impression he makes on

others, is something that every man who looks back will remember. As

the novelist puts it, "He thought he was an iceberg when he was merely

an ice cream of heroic mould."

_The Kentons_, like some other novels by Mr. Howells, may seem to many

readers superficial, because it is so largely taken up with the trivial

details of daily existence. It is really a profound study of life, made

by an artist who has not only the wisdom of the head, but the deeper

wisdom of the heart.

IV

BJOeRNSTJERNE BJOeRNSON

For over half a century this intellectual athlete has been one of the

busiest men in the world. A partisan fighter born and bred, he has been

active in every political Skandinavian struggle; in religious questions

he has fought first on one side and then on the other, changing only by

honest conviction, and hitting with all his might every time; to him the

word "education" is as a red rag to a bull, for he believes that it has

been mainly bad, and if people will only listen, he can make it mainly

good; in a passion of chivalry, he has drawn his pen for the cause of

Woman, whose "sphere" he hopes to change--the most modern and the most

popular of all the vain attempts to square the circle; his powerful

voice has been heard on the lecture platform, not only in his own

beloved country, but all over Europe and in America; he has served for

years as Theatre-Director, in the determination to convert the

playhouse, like everything else he touches, into a vast moral force. In

addition to all the excitement of a life spent in fighting, his purely

literary activity has been enormous in quantity and astonishing in

range. His numerous dramas treat of all possible themes, from the old

Sagas to modern divorce laws; and after exhausting all earthly material,

he has boldly advanced into the realm of the supernatural; his splendid

play, _Beyond Human Power_, holds the boards in most European cities,

and has exercised a profound influence on modern drama. His novels are

as different in style and purpose as it is possible for the novels of

one man to be; and some of them are already classics. A man with such an

endowment, with such tremendous convictions, with buoyant optimism and

terrific energy, has made no small stir in the world, and it will be a

long time before the name of Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson is forgotten.

Had he not possessed, in addition to a fine mind, a magnificent physical

frame, he would long since have vanished into that spiritual world that

has interested him so deeply. But he has the physique of a Norse god.

Many instances of his bodily strength and endurance have been cited; it

is sufficient to remember that even after his mane of hair had become

entirely grey he regularly took his bath by standing naked under a

mountain waterfall. Let that suffice, as one trial of it would for most

of us. He came honestly by his health and vigour, born as he was on a

lonely mountain-side in Norway. It was in the winter of 1832 that this

sturdy baby gave his first cry for freedom, his father being a village

pastor, whose flock were literally scattered among steep and desolate

rocks, where the salient feature of the landscape during nine months of

the year was snow. More than once the good shepherd had to seek and save

that which was lost. For society, the little boy had a few pet animals

and the dreams engendered by supreme loneliness. But when he was six

years old, the father was fortunately called to a pastorate in a

beautiful valley on the west coast, surrounded by noble and inspiring

scenery, the effect of which is visibly seen in all his early stories.

We cannot help comparing this vale of beauty, trailing clouds of glory

over Bjoernson's boyhood, with the flat, wet, dismal gloom of East

Prussia, that oppressed so heavily the child Sudermann, and made Dame

Care look so grey.

At the grammar school, at the high school, and at the university he

showed little interest in the curriculum, and no particular aptitude for

study; but before leaving college he had already begun original

composition, and at the age of twenty-four he published a masterpiece.

This was the pastoral romance, _Synnoeve Solbakken_, which for sheer

beauty of style and atmosphere he has never surpassed. For some years

preceding the date of its appearance there had been a lull in literary

activity in Norway. Out of this premonitory hush of stillness came a

beautiful voice, which by the newness and freshness of its tones aroused

immediate interest. Everybody listened, enchanted by the strange

harmony. Men saw that a new prophet had arisen in Israel. The absolute

simplicity of the style, the naivete of the story, the naturalness of

the characters, the short, passionate sentences like those of the Sagas,

the lyrically poetic atmosphere, appealed at once to the Norwegian

heart. Why is it that we are surprised in books and in plays by simple

language and natural characters? It must be that we are so accustomed to

literary conventions remote from actual life, that when we behold real

people and hear natural talk in works of art our first emotion is glad

astonishment. For the same reason we praise certain persons for

displaying what we call common sense. Be this as it may, no one believed

that a pastoral romance could be so vigorous, so fresh, and so true. Of

all forms of literature, pastoral tales, whether in verse or in prose,

have been commonly the most artificial and the most insipid; but here

was the breath of life. I can recommend nothing better for the soul

weary of the closeness of modern naturalism than a course of reading in

the early work of Bjoernson.

He followed this initial success with three other beautiful prose

lyrics--_Arne_, _A Happy Boy_, and _The Fisher Maiden_. These stories

exhibit the same qualities so strikingly displayed in _Synnoeve

Solbakken_. In all this artistic production Bjoernson is an

impressionist, reproducing with absolute fidelity what he saw, both in

the world of matter and of spirit. We may rely faithfully on the

correctness of these pictures, whether they portray natural scenery,

country customs, or peasant character. We inhale Norway. We can smell

the pines. The nipping and eager air, the dark green resinous

forests--we feel these as plainly as if we were physically present in

the Land of the Midnight Sun. The kindly simplicity of the peasants, the

village ceremonies at weddings and funerals, the cheerful loneliness

with sheep on mountain pasture, and the subdued but universal note of

deep rural piety, make one feel as though the whole community were bound

by gold chains about the feet of God. Bjoernson says, "The church is in

the foreground of Norwegian peasant life." And indeed everything seems

to centre around God's acre, and the spire of the meeting-house points

in the same direction as the stories themselves. Many beautiful passages

affect us like noble music; our eyes are filled with happy tears.

In view of the strong and ardent personality of the author, it is

curious that these early romances should be so truly objective. One

feels his personality in a general way, as one feels that of Turgenev;

but the young writer separates himself entirely from the course of the

story; he nowhere interferes. The characters apparently develop without

his assistance, as the events take place without any manipulation. As a

work of objective art, _Synnoeve Solbakken_ approaches flawless

perfection. It has one plot, which travels in one direction--forward.

The persons are intensely Norwegian, but there their similarity ends.

Each is individualised. The simplicity of the story is so remarkable

that to some superficial and unobservant readers it has seemed childish.

The very acme of Art is so close to nature that it sometimes is mistaken

for no art at all, like the acting of Garrick or the style of Jane

Austen. Adverse criticisms are the highest compliments. Language is well

managed when it expresses profound thoughts in words clear to a child.

The love scenes in this narrative are idyllic; in fact, the whole book

is an idyl. It seems radiant with sunshine. It is as pure as a mountain

lake, and as refreshing. And besides the artistic unity of the work,

that satisfies one's standards so fully, there is an exquisite something

hard to define; a play of fancy, a veil of poetic beauty lingering over

the story, that makes us feel when we have closed the book as if we were

gazing at a clear winter sunset.

Bjoernson has the creative imagination of the true poet. In the wonderful

prologue to _Arne_ he gives the trees separate personalities, in a

manner to arouse almost the envy of Thomas Hardy. Indeed, the author of

_The Woodlanders_ has never felt the trees more intensely than the

Norwegian novelist. The prose style unconsciously breaks into verse form

at times, with the natural grace and ease of a singing bird. Not the

least charming incidents in Bjoernson's romances are the frequent lyrics,

that spring up like cowslips in a pasture.

"Punctual as Springtide forth peep they."

* * * * *

The novels in Bjoernson's second period are so totally unlike those we

have just been considering that if all his work had been published

anonymously, no one would have ventured to say that the same man had

written _A Happy Boy_ and _In God's Way_. There came a pause in his

creative activity. He wrote little imaginative literature, and many

thought the well of his inspiration had gone dry. Really he was passing

through a belated _Sturm und Drang_; a tremendous intellectual struggle

and fermentation had set in, from which he emerged mentally a changed

man, with a new outfit of opinions and ideas. At nearly the same time

his great contemporary Tolstoi was also in the Slough of Despond, but he

climbed out on the other side and set his face towards the Celestial

City. Bjoernson's floundering ultimately carried him in precisely the

opposite direction. While Tolstoi was studying the New Testament,

Bjoernson applied himself to Darwin, Mill, and Spencer, and became

completely converted from the Christianity of his youth. Many minds

would have been temporarily paralysed by such a result, and would

finally have become either pessimistic or coldly critical. But Bjoernson

simply could not endure to be a gloomy, cynical spectator of life, like

his countryman, Ibsen, any more than he could leave his native land and

calmly view its nakedness from the comfortable environment of Munich or

Rome. Bjoernson has the sort of intellect that cannot remain in

equilibrium. He was ever a fighter, and cannot live without something to

fight for. The natural optimism of his temperament, so opposed in every

way to the blank despair of Ibsen, made him see in his new views the way

of salvation. He is just as sure he is right now as he was when he held

opinions exactly the contrary. With joyful ardour he became the champion

and propagandist of democracy in politics and of free thought in

religion; apparently adopting Spencer's saying, "To the true reformer no

institution is sacred, no belief above criticism." For the word

"reformer" precisely describes Bjoernson; like the chief characters in

his later novels, he is an apostle of reform, zealous, tireless, and

tiresome.

Lowell, in his fine essay on Gray, said that one reason why the

eighteenth century was so comfortable was that "responsibility for the

universe had not yet been invented." Now Bjoernson feels this

responsibility with all the strength of his nature, and however

admirable it may be as a moral quality, it has vitiated his artistic

career. As he renounced Christianity for agnosticism, so he renounced

romance for realism. The novels written since 1875 are not only unlike

his early pastoral romances in literary style; they are totally

different productions in tone, in spirit, and in intention. And, from

the point of view of art, they are, in my opinion, as inferior to the

work of his youth as Hawthorne's campaign _Life of Pierce_ is inferior

to _The Scarlet Letter_. In every way Bjoernson is farther off from

heaven than when he was a boy.

In addition to many short sketches, his later period includes three

realistic novels. These are: _Flags Are Flying in Town and Harbour_,

translated into English with the title, _The Heritage of the Kurts_, for

it is a study in heredity; _In God's Way_,[4] loudly proclaimed as his

masterpiece, and _Mary_. The first two originally attracted more

attention abroad than at home. The _Flags_ hung idly in Norway, and the

orthodox were not anxious to get in God's way. But the second book

produced considerable excitement in England, which finally reacted in

Christiania and Copenhagen; it is still hotly discussed. In these three

novels the author has stepped out of the role of artist and become a

kind of professor of pedagogy, his speciality being the education of

women. In _Flags_ the principal part of the story is taken up with a

girls' school, which gives the novelist an opportunity to include a

confused study of heredity, and to air all sorts of educational theory.

The chief one appears to be that in the curriculum for young girls the

"major" should be physiology. Hygiene, which so many bewildered persons

are accepting just now in lieu of the Gospel, plays a heavy part in

Bjoernson's later work. The gymnasium in _Flags_ takes the place of the

church in _Synnoeve_; and acrobatic feats of the body are deemed more

healthful than the religious aspirations of the soul. Kallem, a

prominent character of the story _In God's Way_, usually appears walking

on his hands, which is not the only fashion in which he is upside down.

The book _Flags_ is, frankly speaking, an intolerable bore. The hero,

Rendalen, who also appears in the subsequent novel, is the mouthpiece of

the new opinions of the author; a convenient if clumsy device, for

whenever Bjoernson wishes to expound his views on education, hygiene, or

religion, he simply makes Rendalen deliver a lecture. Didactic novels

are in general a poor substitute either for learning or for fiction,

but they are doubly bad when the author is confused in his ideas of

science and in his notions of art. One general "lesson" emerges from the

jargon of this book--that men should suffer for immorality as severely

as women, a doctrine neither new nor practicable. The difficulty is that

with Bjoernson, as with some others who shout this edict, the equalising

of the punishment takes the form of leaving the men as they are, and

issuing a general pardon to the women. Rendalen, the head-master of the

school, is constantly bringing up this topic, and he makes it the chief

subject for discussion in the girls' debating society! These females are

going to be emancipated. A pseudo-scientific twist is also given to this

novel by the introduction of mesmerism and hypnotic influence, matters

in which the author is deeply interested. We are given to understand

that a large number of women are annually ruined, not by their lack of

moral conviction and will power, but simply by the hypnotic influence of

men. One may perhaps reasonably doubt the ultimate value of a wide

dissemination of this great idea, especially in a young ladies'

seminary. To the unsympathetic reader, the one question that will keep

him afloat in all this welter, is not concerned with pedagogy; it is the

honest attempt to discover why the book bears its strange title.

Unfortunately he will not find out until the last leaf. Then

"the connexion of which with the plot one sees."

[4] In the original the title is "In God's Ways."

It is pleasant to take up the volume _In God's Way_, for, however

disappointing it may be to those who know the young Bjoernson, it is

vastly superior to _Flags_. It is what is called to-day a "strong"

novel, and has naturally evoked the widest variation of comment. By many

it has been greeted with enthusiastic admiration and by many with

outspoken disgust. Psychologically, it is indeed powerful. The

characters are interesting, and they develop in a way that may or may

not be God's, but resemble His in being mysterious. One cannot foresee

in the early chapters what is going to happen to the _dramatis personae_,

nor what is to be our final attitude toward any of them. Think of the

impression made on us by our first acquaintance with Josephine, or

Kallem, or Ragni, or Ole; and then compare it with the state of our

feelings as we draw near the end. Not one of these characters remains

the same; each one develops, and develops as he might in actual life.

Bjoernson does not approach his men and women from an easy chair, in the

descriptive manner; once created, we feel that they would grow without

his aid.

For all this particular triumph of art, _In God's Way_ is plainly a

didactic novel, with the author preaching from beginning to end. The

"fighting" quality in the novelist gets the better of his literary

genius. We have a story in the extreme realistic style, marked by

occasional scenes of great beauty and force; but the exposition of

doctrine is somewhat vague and confused, and the construction of the

whole work decidedly inartistic. Two general points, however, are made

clear: First, that one may walk in God's way without believing in God.

Religion is of no importance in comparison with conduct, nor have the

two things any vital or necessary connexion. This is a modern view, and

perhaps a natural reaction from the strictness of Bjoernson's childhood

training. Second, that virtue is a matter entirely of the heart, bearing

no relation whatever to the statute-book. A woman may be legally an

adulteress and yet absolutely pure. This also is quite familiar to us in

the pages of modern dramatists and novelists. Bjoernson has taken an

extraordinary instance to prove his thesis, a thesis that perhaps needs

no emphasis, for human nature is only too well disposed to make its

moral creed coincide with its bodily instincts.

The same theme--mental as opposed to physical female chastity--is the

leading idea of _Mary_, a novel that has had considerable success in

Norway and in Germany, but has only this year been translated into

English. This work of his old age shows not the slightest trace of

decay. It is an interesting and powerful analysis of a girl's heart,

written in short, vigorous sentences. Mary, after taking plenty of time

for reflexion, and without any solicitation, deliberately gives herself

to her lover, in a manner exactly similar to a scene in Maupassant's

novel, _Notre Coeur_. Her fiance is naturally amazed, as there has been

nothing leading up to this; she comes to him of her own free will. Her

theory of conduct (which exemplifies that of Bjoernson) is that a woman

is the sovereign mistress of her own body, and can do what she pleases.

There is nothing immoral in a woman's free gift of herself to her lover,

provided she does it out of her royal bounty, and not as a weak yielding

to masculine pursuit. The next day Mary is grievously disappointed to

discover that, instead of the homage and worship she expected, the

erstwhile timid lover glories in the sense of possession. She fears that

she cannot live an absolutely independent life with such a husband--and

Bjoernson's gospel is, of course, the untrammelled freedom of woman. So,

although she is about to become a mother, she deliberately cancels the

engagement to the putative child's father; this puzzles him even more

than her previous conduct, though he is forced to acquiesce. Then, in a

final access of despair, as she is about to commit suicide, she is

rescued by a man whose love is like the moth's for the star--who tells

her that no matter what she has done, she is the noblest, purest woman

on earth, and the chaste queen of his heart. Thus, by a stroke of good

fortune, rather than by anything inevitable in the story, the book ends

happily, with Mary and her second adoring lover in the very delirium of

joy. It is evident that the novel is nothing but a _Tendenz-Roman_;

Bjoernson wishes us to approve of his heroine's conduct throughout--of

the entirely unnecessary sacrifice of her virtue, of the subsequent

sacrifice of her reputation, and of her remorseless joy in the arms of

another man. Such is to be the doctrine of sex equality; men are not to

be made more virtuous, but the freedom of women is not only to be

pardoned, but approved.

In comparing the three late with the four early novels, the most

striking change is instantly apparent to anyone who reads _Synnoeve

Solbakken_ and then opens _In God's Way_. It is the sudden and

depressing change of air, from the mountains to the sick-room. The

abundance of medical detail in the later novel is almost nauseating, and

would be wholly so were it not absurd. One has only to compare the

invigorating scenery and the simple love scenes in _Synnoeve_ with the

minute examination of Ragni's spittle (for tuberculosis) in the other

book--but enough is said. Despite all that has been written in praise of

Bjoernson's "courage" in dealing with problems of sex and disease, I

sympathise with the cry of his friend in 1879:--

"Come back again, dear Bjoernson, come back!"

It is easy to see that the influence of modern English scepticism cannot

account entirely for the revolution in the Norwegian's mind and art. We

can clearly observe an attraction much nearer, that has drawn this

luminous star so far out of its course. It is none other than the mighty

Ibsen. Ibsen's analysis of disease, his examination of marriage

problems, his Ishmaelite attacks on the present structure of civilised

society--all this has had its effect on his contemporary and countryman.

As a destructive force Ibsen was stronger than Bjoernson, because he was

ruthless. But one had the courage of despair, while the other has the

courage of hope. Bjoernson does not believe in Fate and is not afraid of

it. He loves and believes in humanity. His gloomiest books end with a

vision. There is always a rift in the clouds. Throughout all his career

he has set his face steadfastly toward what he has taken to be the true

light. Such men compel admiration, no matter whose colours they bear.

And however much we may deplore his present course, we cannot now echo

the cry of his friend and say, "Come back!" The language of the poet

better expresses our attitude:--

"Life's night begins: let him never come back to us!

There would be doubt, hesitation, and pain,

Forced praise on our part--the glimmer of twilight,

Never glad confident morning again!

Best fight on well, for we taught him--strike gallantly,

Menace our heart ere we master his own;

Then let him receive the new knowledge and wait us,

Pardoned in heaven, the first by the throne!"

V

MARK TWAIN

During the last twenty years, a profound change has taken place in the

attitude of the reading public toward Mark Twain. I can remember very

well when he was regarded merely as a humorist, and one opened his books

with an anticipatory grin. Very few supposed that he belonged to

literature; and a complete, uniform edition of his _Works_ would perhaps

have been received with something of the mockery that greeted Ben

Jonson's folio in 1616. Professor Richardson's _American Literature_,

which is still a standard work, appeared originally in 1886. My copy,

which bears the date 1892, contains only two references in the index to

Mark Twain, while Mr. Cable, for example, receives ten; and the whole

volume fills exactly nine hundred and ninety pages. Looking up one of

the two references, we find the following opinion:--

"But there is a class of writers, authors ranking below Irving or

Lowell, and lacking the higher artistic or moral purpose of the

greater humorists, who amuse a generation and then pass from sight.

Every period demands a new manner of jest, after the current

fashion.... The reigning favourites of the day are Frank R.

Stockton, Joel Chandler Harris, the various newspaper jokers, and

'Mark Twain.' But the creators of 'Pomona' and 'Rudder Grange,' of

'Uncle Remus and his Folk-lore Stories,' and 'Innocents Abroad,'

clever as they are, must make hay while the sun shines. Twenty

years hence, unless they chance to enshrine their wit in some

higher literary achievement, their unknown successors will be the

privileged comedians of the republic. Humour alone never gives its

masters a place in literature; it must coexist with literary

qualities, and must usually be joined with such pathos as one finds

in Lamb, Hood, Irving, or Holmes."

It is interesting to remember that before this pronouncement was

published, _Tom Sawyer_ and _Huckleberry Finn_ had been read by

thousands. Professor Richardson continued: "Two or three divisions of

American humour deserve somewhat more respectful treatment," and he

proceeds to give a full page to Petroleum V. Nasby, another page to

Artemus Ward, and two and one-half pages to Josh Billings, while Mark

Twain had received less than four lines. After stating that, in the case

of authors like Mark Twain, "temporary amusement, not literary product,

is the thing sought and given," Professor Richardson announces that the

department of fiction will be considered later. In this "department,"

Mark Twain is not mentioned at all, although Julian Hawthorne receives

over three pages!

I have quoted Professor Richardson at length, because he is a deservedly

high authority, and well represents an attitude toward Mark Twain that

was common all during the eighties. Another college professor, who is

to-day one of the best living American critics, says, in his _Initial

Studies in American Letters_ (1895), "Though it would be ridiculous to

maintain that either of these writers [Artemus Ward and Mark Twain]

takes rank with Lowell and Holmes, ... still it will not do to ignore

them as mere buffoons, or even to predict that their humours will soon

be forgotten." There is no allusion in his book to _Tom Sawyer_ or

_Huckleberry Finn_, nor does the critic seem to regard their creator as

in any sense a novelist. Still another writer, in a passing allusion to

Mark Twain, says, "Only a very small portion of his writing has any

place as literature."

Literary opinions change as time progresses; and no one could have

observed the remarkable demonstration at the seventieth birthday of our

great national humorist without feeling that most of his contemporaries

regarded him, not as their peer, but as their Chief. Without wishing to

make any invidious comparisons, I cannot refrain from commenting on the

statement that it would be "ridiculous" to maintain that Mark Twain

takes rank with Oliver Wendell Holmes. It is, of course, absolutely

impossible to predict the future; the only real test of the value of a

book is Time. Who now reads Cowley? Time has laughed at so many

contemporary judgements that it would be foolhardy to make positive

assertions about literary stock quotations one hundred years from now.

Still, guesses are not prohibited; and I think it not unlikely that the

name of Mark Twain will outlast the name of Holmes. American Literature

would surely be the poorer if the great Boston Brahmin had not enlivened

it with his rich humour, his lambent wit, and his sincere pathos; but

the whole content of his work seems slighter than the big American prose

epics of the man of our day.

Indeed, it seems to me that Mark Twain is our foremost living American

writer. He has not the subtlety of Henry James or the wonderful charm of

Mr. Howells; he could not have written _Daisy Miller_, or _A Modern

Instance_, or _Indian Summer_, or _The Kentons_--books which exhibit

literary quality of an exceedingly high order. I have read them over and

over again, with constantly increasing profit and delight. I wish that

Mr. Howells might live for ever, and give to every generation the pure

intellectual joy that he has given to ours. But the natural endowment of

Mark Twain is still greater. Mr. Howells has made the most of himself;

God has done it all for Mark Twain. If there be a living American writer

touched with true genius, whose books glow with the divine fire, it is

he. He has always been a conscientious artist; but no amount of industry

could ever have produced a _Huckleberry Finn_.

When I was a child at the West Middle Grammar School of Hartford, on one

memorable April day, Mark Twain addressed the graduating-class. I was

thirteen years old, but I have found it impossible to forget what he

said. The subject of his "remarks" was Methuselah. He informed us that

Methuselah lived to the ripe old age of nine hundred and sixty-nine. But

he might as well have lived to be several thousand--nothing happened.

The speaker told us that we should all live longer than Methuselah.

Fifty years of Europe are better than a cycle of Cathay, and twenty

years of modern American life are longer and richer in content than the

old patriarch's thousand. Ours will be the true age in which to live,

when more will happen in a day than in a year of the flat existence of

our ancestors. I cannot remember his words; but what a fine thing it is

to hear a speech, and carry away an idea!

I have since observed that this idea runs through much of his literary

work. His philosophy of life underlies his broadest burlesque--for _A

Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court_ is simply an exposure of the

"good old times." Mark Twain believes in the Present, in human progress.

Too often do we apprehend the Middle Ages through the glowing pages of

Spenser and Walter Scott; we see only glittering processions of ladies

dead and lovely knights. Mark Twain shows us the wretched condition of

the common people, their utter ignorance and degradation, the coarseness

and immorality of technical chivalry, the cruel and unscrupulous

ecclesiastical tyranny, and the capricious insolence of the barons. One

may regret that he has reversed the dynamics in so glorious a book as

Malory's _Morte d'Arthur_, but, through all the buffoonery and roaring

mirth with which the knights in armour are buried, the artistic and

moral purpose of the satirist is clear. If I understand him rightly, he

would have us believe that _our_ age, not theirs, is the "good time";

nay, ours is the age of magic and wonder. We need not regret in

melancholy sentimentality the picturesqueness of bygone days, for we

ourselves live, not in a material and commonplace generation, but in the

very midst of miracles and romance. Merlin and the Fay Morgana would

have given all their petty skill to have been able to use a telephone or

a phonograph, or to see a moving picture. The sleeping princess and her

castle were awakened by a kiss; but in the twentieth century a man in

Washington touches a button, and hundreds of miles away tons of

machinery begin to move, fountains begin to play, and the air resounds

with the whir of wheels. In comparison with to-day, the age of chivalry

seems dull and poor. Even in chivalry itself our author is more knightly

than Lancelot; for was there ever a more truly chivalrous performance

than Mark Twain's essay on Harriet Shelley, or his literary monument to

Joan of Arc? In these earnest pages, our national humorist appears as

the true knight.

Mark Twain's humour is purely American. It is not the humour of

Washington Irving, which resembles that of Addison and Thackeray; it is

not delicate and indirect. It is genial, sometimes outrageous,

mirth--laughter holding both his sides. I have found it difficult to

read him in a library or on a street-car, for explosions of pent-up

mirth or a distorted face are apt to attract unpleasant attention in

such public places. Mark Twain's humour is boisterous, uproarious,

colossal, overwhelming. As has often been remarked, the Americans are

not naturally a gay people, like the French; nor are we light-hearted

and careless, like the Irish and the Negro. At heart, we are intensely

serious, nervous, melancholy. For humour, therefore, we naturally turn

to buffoonery and burlesque, as a reaction against the strain and

tension of life. Our attitude is something like that of the lonely

author of the _Anatomy of Melancholy_, who used to lean over the

parapet of Magdalen Bridge, and shake with mirth at the obscene jokes of

the bargemen. We like Mark Twain's humour, not because we are frivolous,

but because we are just the reverse. I have never known a frivolous

person who really enjoyed or appreciated Mark Twain.

The essence of Mark Twain's humour is Incongruity. The jumping frog is

named Daniel Webster; and, indeed, the intense gravity of a frog's face,

with the droop at the corners of the mouth, might well be envied by many

an American Senator. When the shotted frog vainly attempted to leave the

earth, he shrugged his shoulders "like a Frenchman." Bilgewater and the

Dolphin on the raft are grotesquely incongruous figures. The rescuing of

Jim from his prison cell is full of the most incongruous ideas, his

common-sense attitude toward the whole transaction contrasting strangely

with that of the romantic Tom. Along with the constant incongruity goes

the element of surprise--which Professor Beers has well pointed out.

When one begins a sentence, in an apparently serious discussion, one

never knows how it will end. In discussing the peace that accompanies

religious faith, Mark Twain says that he has often been impressed

with the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces.

Exaggeration--deliberate, enormous hyperbole--is another feature.

Rudyard Kipling, who has been profoundly influenced by Mark Twain, and

has learned much from him, often employs the same device, as in

_Brugglesmith_. Irreverence is also a noteworthy quality. In his

travel-books, we are given the attitude of the typical American

Philistine toward the wonders and sacred relics of the Old World, the

whole thing being a gigantic burlesque on the sentimental guide-books

which were so much in vogue before the era of Baedeker. With such

continuous fun and mirth, satire and burlesque, it is no wonder that

Mark Twain should not always be at his best. He is doubtless sometimes

flat, sometimes coarse, as all humorists since Rabelais have been. The

wonder is that his level has been so high. I remember, just before the

appearance of _Following the Equator_, I had been told that Mark Twain's

inspiration was finally gone, and that he could not be funny if he

tried. To test this, I opened the new book, and this is what I found on

the first page:--

"We sailed for America, and there made certain preparations. This

took but little time. Two members of my family elected to go with

me. Also a carbuncle. The dictionary says a carbuncle is a kind of

jewel. Humour is out of place in a dictionary."

Although Mark Twain has the great qualities of the true humorist--common

sense, human sympathy, and an accurate eye for proportion--he is much

more than a humorist. His work shows high literary quality, the quality

that appears in first-rate novels. He has shown himself to be a genuine

artist. He has done something which many popular novelists have signally

failed to accomplish--he has created real characters. His two wonderful

boys, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, are wonderful in quite different

ways. The creator of Tom exhibited remarkable observation; the creator

of Huck showed the divine touch of imagination. Tom is the American

boy--he is "smart." In having his fence whitewashed, in controlling a

pool of Sabbath-school tickets at the precise psychological moment, he

displays abundant promise of future success in business. Huck, on the

other hand, is the child of nature, harmless, sincere, and crudely

imaginative. His reasonings with Jim about nature and God belong to the

same department of natural theology as that illustrated in Browning's

_Caliban_. The night on the raft with Jim, when these two creatures look

aloft at the stars, and Jim reckons the moon _laid_ them, is a case in

point.

"We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to

lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether

they was made or just happened. Jim he allowed they was made, but I

allowed they happened; I judged it would have took too long to

_make_ so many. Jim said the moon could a _laid_ them; well, that

looked kind of reasonable, so I didn't say nothing against it,

because I've seen a frog lay most as many, so of course it could be

done. We used to watch the stars that fell, too, and see them

streak down. Jim allowed they'd got spoiled and was hove out of the

nest."

Again, Mark Twain has so much dramatic power that, were his literary

career beginning instead of closing, he might write for us the great

American play that we are still awaiting. The story of the feud between

the Grangerfords and the Shepherdsons is thrillingly dramatic, and the

tragic climax seizes the heart. The shooting of the drunken Boggs, the

gathering of the mob, and its control by one masterful personality,

belong essentially to true drama, and are written with power and

insight. The pathos of these scenes is never false, never mawkish or

overdone; it is the pathos of life itself. Mark Twain's extraordinary

skill in descriptive passages shows, not merely keen observation, but

the instinct for the specific word--the one word that is always better

than any of its synonyms, for it makes the picture real--it creates the

illusion, which is the essence of all literary art. The storm, for

example:--

"It was my watch below till twelve, but I wouldn't a turned in

anyway if I'd had a bed, because a body don't see such a storm as

that every day in the week, not by a long sight. My souls, how the

wind did scream along! And every second or two there'd come a glare

that lit up the white-caps for a half a mile around, and you'd see

the islands looking dusty through the rain, and the trees thrashing

around in the wind; then comes a _h-wach_!--bum! bum!

bumble-umble-umbum-bum-bum-bum--and the thunder would go rumbling

and grumbling away, and quit--and then _rip_ comes another flash

and another sockdolager. The waves 'most washed me off the raft

sometimes, but I hadn't any clothes on, and didn't mind. We didn't

have no trouble about snags; the lightning was glaring and

flittering around so constant that we could see them plenty soon

enough to throw her head this way or that and miss them."

_Tom Sawyer_ and _Huckleberry Finn_ are prose epics of American life.

The former is one of those books--of which _The Pilgrim's Progress_,

_Gulliver's Travels_, and _Robinson Crusoe_ are supreme examples--that

are read at different periods of one's life from very different points

of view; so that it is not easy to say when one enjoys them the

most--before one understands their real significance or after. Nearly

all healthy boys enjoy reading _Tom Sawyer_, because the intrinsic

interest of the story is so great, and the various adventures of the

hero are portrayed with such gusto. Yet it is impossible to outgrow the

book. The eternal Boy is there, and one cannot appreciate the nature of

boyhood properly until one has ceased to be a boy. The other

masterpiece, _Huckleberry Finn_, is really not a child's book at all.

Children devour it, but they do not digest it. It is a permanent picture

of a certain period of American history, and this picture is made

complete, not so much by the striking portraits of individuals placed on

the huge canvas, as by the vital unity of the whole composition. If one

wishes to know what life on the Mississippi really was, to know and

understand the peculiar social conditions of that highly exciting time,

one has merely to read through this powerful narrative, and a definite,

coherent, vivid impression remains.

By those who have lived there, and whose minds are comparatively free

from prejudice, Mark Twain's pictures of life in the South before the

war are regarded as, on the whole, nearer the truth than those supplied

by any other artist. One reason for this is the aim of the author; he

was not trying to support or to defend any particular theory--no, his

aim was purely and wholly artistic. In _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, a book by no

means devoid of literary art, the red-hot indignation of the author

largely nullified her evident desire to tell the truth. If one succeeds

in telling the truth about anything whatever, one must have something

more than the _desire_ to tell the truth; one must know how to do it.

False impressions do not always, probably do not commonly, come from

deliberate liars. Mrs. Stowe's astonishing work is not really the

history of slavery; it is the history of abolition sentiment. On the

other hand, writers so graceful, talented, and clever as Mr. Page and

Mr. Hopkinson Smith do not always give us pictures that correctly

represent, except locally, the actual situation before the war; for

these gentlemen seem to have _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ in mind. Mark Twain

gives us both points of view; he shows us the beautiful side of

slavery,--for it had a wonderfully beautiful, patriarchal side,--and he

also shows us the horror of it. The living dread of the Negro that he

would be sold down the river, has never been more vividly represented

than when the poor woman in _Pudd'nhead Wilson_ sees the water swirling

against the snag, and realises that she is bound the wrong way. That one

scene makes an indelible impression on the reader's mind, and

counteracts tons of polemics. The peculiar harmlessness of Jim is

beautiful to contemplate. Although he and Huck really own the raft, and

have taken all the risk, they obey implicitly the orders of the two

tramps who call themselves Duke and King. Had that been a raft on the

Connecticut River, and had Huck and Jim been Yankees, they would have

said to the intruders, "Whose raft is this, anyway?"

Mark Twain may be trusted to tell the truth; for the eye of the born

caricature artist always sees the salient point. Caricatures often give

us a better idea of their object than a photograph; for the things that

are exaggerated, be it a large nose, or a long neck, are, after all,

the things that differentiate this particular individual from the mass.

Everybody remembers how Tweed was caught by one of Nast's cartoons.

Mark Twain is through and through American. If foreigners really wish to

know the American spirit, let them read Mark Twain. He is far more

American than their favourite specimen, Walt Whitman. The essentially

American qualities of common sense, energy, enterprise, good-humour, and

Philistinism fairly shriek from his pages. He reveals us in our

limitations, in our lack of appreciation of certain beautiful things,

fully as well as he pictures us in coarser but more triumphant aspects.

It is, of course, preposterous to say that Americans are totally

different from other humans; we have no monopoly of common sense and

good-humour, nor are we all hide-bound Philistines. But there is

something pronounced in the American character, and the books of Mark

Twain reveal it. He has also more than once been a valuable and

efficient champion. Without being an offensive and blatant Jingo, I

think he is content to be an American.

Mark Twain is our great Democrat. Democracy is his political, social,

and moral creed. His hatred of snobbery, affectation, and assumed

superiority is total. His democracy has no limits; it is bottom-less and

far-reaching. Nothing seems really sacred to him except the sacred

right of every individual to do exactly as he pleases; which means, of

course, that no one can interfere with another's right, for then

democracy would be the privilege of a few, and would stultify itself.

Not only does the spirit of democracy breathe out from all his greater

books, but it is shown in specific instances, such as _Travelling with a

Reformer_; and Mark Twain has more than once given testimony for his

creed, without recourse to the pen.

At the head of all American novelists, living and dead, stands Nathaniel

Hawthorne, unapproached, possibly unapproachable. His fine and subtle

art is an altogether different thing from the art of our mighty,

democratic, national humorist. But Literature is wonderfully diverse in

its content; and the historian of American Letters, in the far future,

will probably find it impossible to omit the name of Mark Twain.

VI

HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ

In a private letter to a friend, written in 1896, the late Mr. Charles

Dudley Warner remarked: "I am just reading _Children of the Soil_, which

I got in London before I sailed. It confirms me in my very high opinion

of him. I said the other day that I think him at the head of living

novelists, both in range, grasp of a historical situation, intuition and

knowledge of human nature. Comparisons are always dangerous, but I know

no historical novelist who is his superior, or who is more successful in

creating characters. His canvas is very large, and in the beginning of

his historical romances the reader needs patience, but the picture

finally comes out vividly, and the episodes in the grand story are

perfectly enthralling. Of his novels of modern life I cannot speak too

highly. The subtlety of his analysis is wonderful, and the shades of

character are delineated by slight but always telling strokes. There is

the same reality in them that is in his romances. As to the secret of

his power, who can say? It is genius (I still believe in that word) but

re-enforced by very hard labour and study, by much reading, and by acute

observation."

This letter may serve as an excellent summary of the opinions of many

intelligent American critics concerning a writer whose name was unknown

to us in 1890, and of whom the whole world was talking in 1895.[5] One

reason--apart from their intrinsic excellence--for the Byronic

suddenness of the fame of the Polish Trilogy, was the psychological

opportuneness of its appearance. In England and in America the recent

Romantic Revival was at its flood; we were all reading historical

romances, and were hungry for more. Sienkiewicz satisfied us by

providing exactly what we were looking for. In his own country he was

idolised, for his single pen had done more than many years of tumultuous

discussion, to put Poland back on the map of Europe. At the exercises

commemorating the five hundredth anniversary of the University of

Cracow, the late President Gilman, who had the well-deserved honour of

speaking for the universities of America, said: "America thanks Poland

for three great names: Copernicus, to whom all the world is indebted;

Kosciuszko, who spilled his blood for American independence; and

Sienkiewicz, whose name is a household word in thousands of American

homes, and who has introduced Poland to the American people."[6]

[5] His name does not appear in standard English biographical

dictionaries or literary reference books for 1893 or 1894.

[6] See an interesting article in the _Outlook_ for 3 August, 1901, _A

Visit to Sienkiewicz_, by L. E. Van Norman.

Sienkiewicz was born in 1845. After student days at Warsaw, he came over

in 1876-1877 to California, in a party that included Madame Modjeska.

They attempted to establish a kind of socialistic community, which bears

in the retrospect a certain resemblance to Brook Farm. Fortunately for

the cause of art, which the world needs more than it does socialism, the

enterprise was a failure. Sienkiewicz returned to Poland, and began his

literary career; Madame Modjeska became one of the chief ornaments of

the English stage for a quarter of a century. Her ashes now rest in the

ancient Polish city where President Gilman uttered his fine tribute to

the friend of her youth.

The three great Polish romances were all written in the eighties; and at

about the same time the author was also engaged in the composition of

purely realistic work, which displays his powers in a quite different

form of art, and constitutes the most original--though not the most

popular--part of his literary production. The _Children of the Soil_,

which some of the elect in Poland consider his masterpiece, is a novel,

constructed and executed in the strictest style of realism; _Without

Dogma_ is still farther removed from the Romantic manner, for it is a

story of psychological analytical introspection. Sienkiewicz himself

regards _Children of the Soil_ as his favourite, although he is "not

prepared to say just why." And _Without Dogma_ he thinks to be "in many

respects my strongest work." It is evident that he does not consider

himself primarily a maker of stirring historical romance. But in the

nineties he returned to this form of fiction, producing his Roman

panorama called _Quo Vadis_, which, although it has made the biggest

noise of all his books, is perhaps the least valuable. Like _Ben Hur_,

it was warmed over into a tremendously successful melodrama, and

received the final compliment of parody.[7] Toward the close of the

century, Sienkiewicz completed another massive historical romance, _The

Knights of the Cross_, which, in its abundant action, striking

characterisation, and charming humour, recalled the Trilogy; this was

followed by _On the Field of Glory_, and we may confidently expect more,

though never too much; he simply could not be dull if he tried.

[7] One of the most grotesque and laughable burlesques ever seen on the

American stage was the travesty of _Quo Vadis_, with the heroine Lithia,

who drew a lobster on the sand: the strong man, Zero, wrenched the neck

off a wild borax.

In a time like ours, when literary tabloids take the place of wholesome

mental food, when many successful novels can be read at a sitting or a

lying--requiring no exertion either of soul or body--the portentous size

of these Polish stories is a magnificent challenge. If some books are to

be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and

digested, what shall we do with Sienkiewicz? In Mr. Curtin's admirable

translation, the Trilogy covers over twenty-five hundred closely printed

pages; the _Knights of the Cross_ over seven hundred and fifty,

_Children of the Soil_ over six hundred and fifty; _Without Dogma_

(Englished by another hand) has been silently so much abridged in

translation that we do not know what its actual length may be. We do not

rebel, because the next chapter is invariably not a task, but a

temptation; but when we wake up with a start at the call _Finis_, which

magic word transfers us from the seventeenth to the twentieth century,

and contemplate the vast fabric of our dream, we cannot help asking if

there is any law in the construction that requires so much material.

Gogol, in his astonishing romance, _Taras Bulba_, which every lover of

Sienkiewicz should read, gives us the same impression of Vastness, in a

book Lilliputian in size. Nor is there any apparent reason why the

Polish narratives should stop on the last page, nor indeed stop at all.

Combat succeeds combat, when in the midst of the hurly-burly, the Master

of the Show calls time. It is his arbitrary will, rather than any

inevitable succession of events, that shuts off the scene: the men might

be fighting yet. This passion for mere detail mars the first part of

_With Fire and Sword_; one cannot see the forest for the trees.

One reason for this immensity is the author's desire to be historically

accurate, the besetting sin of many recent dramas and novels. Before

beginning to write, Sienkiewicz reads all the authorities and

documentary evidence he can find. The result is plainly seen in the

early pages of _With Fire and Sword_, which read far more like a history

than like a work of fiction--note the striking contrast in _Pan

Michael_! The _Knights of the Cross_ appeared with maps. The topography

of _Quo Vadis_ was so carefully prepared that it almost serves as a

guide-book to ancient Rome. Now the relation of History to Fiction has

never been better stated than by Lessing: "The dramatist uses history,

not because it has happened, but because it has so happened that he

could scarcely find anything else better adapted to his purpose." No

work of fiction has ever gained immortality by its historical accuracy.

Everyone notices that the works of Sienkiewicz are Epics rather than

Novels. Even bearing Fielding clearly in mind, there is no better

illustration to be found in literary history. The Trilogy bears the same

relation to the wars of Poland that the Iliad bears to the struggle at

Troy. The scope and flow of the narrative, the power of the scenes, the

vast perspective, the portraits of individual heroes, the impassioned

poetry of the style--all these qualities are of the Epic. The intense

patriotism is thrilling, and makes one envy the sensations of native

readers. And yet the reasons for the downfall of Poland are made

perfectly clear.

Is the _romanticist_ Sienkiewicz an original writer? In the narrow and

strict sense of the word, I think not. He is eclectic rather than

original. He is a skilful fuser of material, like Shakespeare. At any

rate, his most conspicuous virtue is not originality. He has enormous

force, a glorious imagination, astonishing facility, and a remarkable

power of making pictures, both in panorama and in miniature; but his

work shows constantly the inspiration not only of his historical

authorities, but of previous poets and novelists. Those who are really

familiar with the writings of Homer, Shakespeare, Scott, and Dumas, will

not require further comment on this point. The influence of Homer is

seen in the constant similes, the epithets like "incomparable bowman,"

and the stress laid on the deeds of individual heroes; a thing quite

natural in Homeric warfare, but rather disquieting in the days of

villainous saltpetre. The three swordsmen in _With Fire and Sword_--Pan

Yan, Pan Podbienta, and Pan Michael--infallibly remind us of Dumas's

three guardsmen; and the great duel scenes in the same story, and in the

_Knights of the Cross_, are quite in the manner of the Frenchman. Would

that other writers could employ their reminiscences to such advantage!

In the high colouring, in the management of historical events, and in

patriotic enthusiasm, we cannot help thinking of Scott. But be the debt

to Dumas and to Scott as great as one pleases to estimate, I am free to

acknowledge that I find the romances of the Pole more enthralling than

those of either or both of his two great predecessors.

With reference to the much-discussed character of Zagloba, I confess I

cannot join in the common verdict that pronounces him a "new creation in

literature." Those who believe this delightful person to be something

new and original have simply forgotten Falstaff. If one will begin all

over again, and read the two parts of _Henry IV_, and then take a look

at Zagloba, the author of his being is immediately apparent. Zagloba is

a Polish Falstaff, an astonishingly clever imitation of the real thing.

He is old, white-haired, fat, a resourceful wit and humorist, better at

bottles than at battles, and yet bold when policy requires: in every

essential feature of body and mind he resembles the immortal creation of

Shakespeare. Sienkiewicz _develops_ him with subtle skill and

affectionate solicitude, even as Dickens developed Mr. Pickwick; the

Zagloba of _Pan Michael_ is far sweeter and more mellow than when we

make his acquaintance in the first volume of the Trilogy; but the last

word for this character is the word "original." The real triumph of

Sienkiewicz in the portrayal of the jester is in the fact that he could

imitate Falstaff without spoiling him, for no other living writer could

have done it. A copy that can safely be placed alongside the original

implies art of a very high class. To see Zagloba is to realise the truth

of Falstaff's remark, "I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that

wit is in other men."

Sienkiewicz himself perhaps does not appreciate how much he owes to

Shakespeare, or possibly he is a bit sensitive on the subject, for he

explains, "If I may be permitted to make a comparison, I think that

Zagloba is a better character than Falstaff. At heart the old noble was

a good fellow. He would fight bravely when it became necessary, whereas

Shakespeare makes Falstaff a coward and a poltroon."[8] If the last two

epithets were really an accurate description of Falstaff, he would never

have conquered so many millions of readers.[9]

[8] See Mr. Van Norman's article.

[9] It would be well for Sienkiewicz (and others) to read the brilliant

essay that appeared, "by another hand," in the First Series of Mr.

Birrell's _Obiter Dicta_.

In power of description on a large scale, Sienkiewicz seems to take a

place among the world's great masters of fiction. The bigger the canvas,

the more impressive he becomes. His pictures of the boundless steppes by

day and night, and in the varying seasons of the year, leave permanent

images in the mind. Especially in huge battle scenes is his genius

resplendent. It is as if we viewed the whole drama of blood from a

convenient mountain peak. The awful tumult gathers and breaks like some

hideous storm. So far as I know no writer has ever excelled this

Verestchagin of the pen except Tolstoi--and Tolstoi's power lies more in

the subjective side of the horrors of war. The Russian's skill is more

intellectual, more psychological, of a really higher order of art. For

in the endeavour to make the picture vivid, Sienkiewicz becomes at times

merely sensational. There is no excuse for his frequent descent into

loathsome and horrible detail. The employment of human entrails as a

necklace may be historically accurate, but it is out of place in a work

of art. The minute description of the use of the stake is another

instance of the same tendency, and the unspeakably horrid torture of

Azya in _Pan Michael_ is a sad blot on an otherwise splendid romance.

The love of the physically horrible is an unfortunate characteristic of

our Polish novelist, for it appears in _Quo Vadis_ as well as in the

Trilogy. The greatest works appeal to the mind rather than the senses.

_Pan Michael_ is a great book, not because it reeks with blood and

abounds in hell's ingenuity of pain, but because it presents the

character of a hero made perfect through suffering; every sword-stroke

develops his spirit as well as his arm. Superfluous events, so frequent

in the other works, are here omitted; the story progresses steadily; it

is the most condensed and the most human book in the Trilogy. Again, in

_The Deluge_, the author's highest skill is shown not in the portrayal

of moving accidents by flood and field, but in the regeneration of

Kmita. He passes through a long period of slow moral gestation, which

ultimately brings him from darkness to light.

To non-Slavonic readers, who became acquainted with Sienkiewicz through

the Trilogy, it was a surprise to discover that at home he was equally

distinguished as an exponent of modern realism. The acute demand for

anything and everything from his pen led to the translation of _The

Family of Polanyetski_, rechristened in English (one hardly knows why)

_Children of the Soil_; this was preceded by the curious psychological

study, _Without Dogma_. It is extremely fortunate that these two works

have been made accessible to English readers, for they display powers

that would not otherwise be suspected. It is true that English novelists

have shone in both realism and romance: we need remember only Defoe,

Dickens, and Thackeray. But at the very moment when we were all thinking

of Sienkiewicz as a reincarnation of Scott or Dumas, we were compelled

to revise previous estimates of his position and abilities. Genius

always refuses to be classified, ticketed, or inventoried; just as you

have got your man "placed," or, to change the figure, have solemnly and

definitely ushered him to a seat in the second row on the upper tier,

you discover that he is much bigger than or quite different from your

definition of him. Sienkiewicz is undoubtedly one of the greatest living

masters of the realistic novel. In the two stories just mentioned above,

the most minute trivialities in human intercourse are set forth in a

style that never becomes trivial. He is as good at external description

as he is at psychological analysis. He takes all human nature for his

province. He belongs not only to the "feel" school of novelists, with

Zola, but to the "thought" school, with Turgenev. The workings of the

human mind, as impelled by all sorts of motives, ambitions, and

passions, make the subject for his examination. In the Trilogy, he took

an enormous canvas, and splashed on myriads of figures; in _Without

Dogma_, he puts the soul of one man under the microscope. The events in

this man's life are mainly "transitions from one state of spiritual

experience to another." Naturally the mirror selected is a diary, for

_Without Dogma_ belongs to a school of literature illustrated by such

examples as the _Sorrows of Werther_ and _Amiel's Journal_. It must be

remembered that we have here a study primarily of the Slav character.

The hero cleverly diagnoses his own symptoms as _Slave Improductivite_.

He is perhaps puzzling to the practical Philistine Anglo-Saxon: but not

if one has read Turgenev, Dostoievsky, or Gorky. Turgenev's brilliant

analysis of Rudin must stand for all time as a perfect portrait of the

educated Slav, a person who fulfils the witty definition of a Mugwump,

"one who is educated beyond his capacity." We have a similar character

here, the conventional conception of Hamlet, a man whose power of

reasoning overbalances his strength of will. He can talk brilliantly on

all kinds of intellectual topics, but he cannot bring things to pass. He

has a bad case of _slave improductivite_. The very title, _Without

Dogma_, reveals the lack of conviction that ultimately destroys the

hero. He has absolutely no driving power; as he expresses it, _he does

not know_. If one wishes to examine this sort of mind, extremely common

among the upper classes of Poles and Russians, one cannot do better than

read attentively this book. Every futile impulse, every vain longing,

every idle day-dream, is clearly reflected. It is a melancholy

spectacle, but fascinating and highly instructive. For it is not merely

an individual, but the national Slavonic character that is revealed.

Sienkiewicz is not only a Romanticist and a Realist--he is also a

Moralist. The foundations of his art are set deep in the bed-rock of

moral ideas. As Tolstoi would say, he has the right attitude toward his

characters. He believes that the Novel should strengthen life, not

undermine it; ennoble, not defile it; for it is good tidings, not evil.

"I care not whether the word that I say pleases or not, since I believe

that I reflect the great urgent need of the soul of humanity, which is

crying for a change. People must think according to the laws of logic.

And because they must also live, they want some consolation on the road

of life. Masters after the manner of Zola give them only dissolution,

chaos, a disgust for life, and despair."[10] This is the signal of a

strong and healthy soul. The fact is, that at heart Sienkiewicz is as

stout a moralist as Tolstoi, and with equal ardour recognises

Christianity as the world's best standard and greatest need. The basis

of the novel _Children of the Soil_ is purely Christian. The

simple-hearted Marynia is married to a man far superior to her in mental

endowment and training, as so often happens in Slavonic fiction; she

cannot follow his intellectual flights, and does not even understand the

processes of his mind. She has no talent for metaphysical discussion,

and no knowledge of modern science. But although her education does not

compare with that of her husband, she has, without suspecting it,

completely mastered the art of life; for she is a devout and sincere

Christian, meek and lowly in heart. He finally recognises that while he

has more learning, she has more wisdom; and when the book closes, we see

him a pupil at her feet. All his vain speculations are overthrown by the

power of religion manifested in the purity, peace, and contentment of

his wife's daily life. And now he too--

"Leads it companioned by the woman there.

To live, and see her learn, and learn by her,

Out of the low obscure and petty world....

To have to do with nothing but the true,

The good, the eternal--and these, not alone,

In the main current of the general life,

But small experiences of every day,

Concerns of the particular hearth and home:

To learn not only by a comet's rush

But a rose's birth,--not by the grandeur, God--

But the comfort, Christ."

This idea is revealed positively in _Children of the Soil_, and

negatively in _Without Dogma_. The two women, Marynia and Aniela, are

very similar. Aniela's intellect is elementary compared with that of her

brilliant lover, Leon Ploszowski. But her Christian faith turns out to

be a much better guide to conduct than his flux of metaphysics. She is a

good woman, and knows the difference between right and wrong without

having to look it up in a book. When he urges her to a _liaison_, and

overwhelms her objections with a fine display of modern dialectic, she

concludes the debate by saying, "I cannot argue with you, because you

are so much cleverer than I; but I know that what you want me to do is

wrong, and I will not do it."

[10] Taken here and there from his essay on Zola.

We find exactly the same emphasis when we turn to the historical romance

_Quo Vadis_. The whole story is a glorification of Christianity, of

Christian ethics and Christian belief. The despised Christians have

discovered the secret of life, which the culture of Petronius sought in

vain. It was hidden from the wise and prudent, and revealed unto babes.

The influence of Lygia on Vinicius is, with a totally different

environment, precisely the same as the influence of Marynia on Pan

Stanislav.

Sienkiewicz seems to have much the same Christian conception of Love as

that shown in so many ways by Browning. Love is the _summum bonum_, and

every manifestation of it has something divine. Love in all its forms

appears in these Polish novels, as it does in Browning, from the basest

sensual desire to the purest self-sacrifice. There is indeed a streak of

animalism in Sienkiewicz, which shows in all his works; but, if we may

believe him, it is merely one representation of the great passion, which

so largely controls life and conduct. Love, says Sienkiewicz, with

perhaps more force than clearness, should be the foundation of all

literature. "L'amour--c'est un droit eternel, une force vitale, c'est le

genie--bienfaiteur de notre globe: l'harmonie. Sienkiewicz croit que

l'amour, ainsi compris, est le fondement de la litterature polonaise--et

que cet amour devrait l'etre pour toute la litterature."[11] Some light

may be thrown on this statement by a careful reading of _Pan Michael_.

[11] Sent to me by Dr. Glabisz.

Sienkiewicz is indeed a mighty man--someone has ironically called him a

literary blacksmith. There is nothing decadent in his nature. Compared

with many English, German, and French writers, who seem at times to

express an anaemic and played-out civilisation, he has the very

exuberance of power and an endless wealth of material. It is as if the

world were fresh and new. And he has not only delighted us with the

pageantry of chivalry, and with the depiction of our complex modern

civilisation, he has for us also the stimulating influence of a great

moral force.

VII

HERMANN SUDERMANN

Walking along Michigan Avenue in Chicago one fine day, I stopped in

front of the recently completed hall devoted to music. On the facade of

this building had been placed five names, supposed to represent the five

greatest composers that the world has thus far seen. It was worth while

to pause a moment and to reflect that those five men were all Germans.

Germany's contribution to music is not only greater than that of any

other nation, it is probably greater than that of all the other

countries of the earth put together, and multiplied several times. In

many forms of literary art,--especially perhaps in drama and in lyrical

poetry,--Germany has been eminent; and she has produced the greatest

literary genius since Shakespeare. To-day the Fatherland remains the

intellectual workshop of the world; men and women flock thither to study

subjects as varied as Theology, Chemistry, Mathematics, and Music. All

this splendid achievement in science and in culture makes poverty in the

field of prose fiction all the more remarkable. For the fact is, that

the total number of truly great world-novels written in the German

language, throughout its entire history, can be counted on the fingers

of one hand.

In the making of fiction, from the point of view solely of quality,

Germany cannot stand an instant's comparison with Russia, whose four

great novelists have immensely enriched the world; nor with Great

Britain, where masterpieces have been produced for nearly two hundred

years; nor with France, where the names of notable novels crowd into the

memory; and even America, so poor in literature and in genuine culture,

can show at least one romance that stands higher than anything which has

come from beyond the Rhine. Germany has no reason to feel ashamed of her

barrenness in fiction, so pre-eminent is she in many other and perhaps

nobler forms of art. But it is interesting to enquire for a moment into

possible causes of this phenomenon, and to see if we can discover why

Teutonic fiction is, relatively speaking, so bad.

One dominant fault in most German novels is a lack of true proportion.

The principle of selection, which differentiates a painting from a

photograph, and makes the artist an Interpreter instead of a Recorder,

has been forgotten or overlooked. The high and holy virtue of Omission

should be cultivated more sedulously. The art of leaving out is the art

that produces the real illusion--where, by the omission of unessential

details, things that are salient can be properly emphasised. And what

German novels lack is emphasis. This cannot be obtained by merely

spacing the letters in descriptions and in conversations; it can be

reached only by remembering that prose fiction is as truly an art form

as a Sonata. Instead of novels, the weary reader gets long and tiresome

biographies of rather unimportant persons; people whom we should not in

the least care to know in real life. We follow them dejectedly from the

cradle to the grave. Matters of no earthly consequence either to the

reader, to the hero, or to the course of the plot, are given as much

prominence as great events. In _Joern Uhl_, to take a recent

illustration, the novel is positively choked by trivial detail. Despite

the enormous vogue of this story, it does not seem destined to live. It

will fall by its own weight.

Another great fault is an excess of sentimentality. For the Germans, who

delight in destroying old faiths of humanity, and who remorselessly

hammer away at the shrines where we worship in history and religion,

are, notwithstanding their iconoclasm, the most sentimental people in

the world. Many second-and third-rate German novels are ruined for an

Anglo-Saxon reader by a lush streak of sentimental gush, a curious

blemish in so intellectual and sceptical a race. This excess of soft

material appears in a variety of forms; but to take one common

manifestation of it, I should say that the one single object that has

done more than anything else to weaken and to destroy German fiction, is

the Moon. The Germans are, by nature and by training, scientific; and

what their novels need is not the examination of literary critics, but

the thoughtful attention of astronomers. The Moon is overworked, and

needs a long rest. An immense number of pages are illumined by its

chaste beams, for this satellite is both active and ubiquitous. It

behaves, it must be confessed, in a dramatic manner, but in a way

hopelessly at variance with its methodical and orderly self. In other

words, the Moon, in German fiction, is not astronomical, but decorative.

I have read some stories where it seems to rise on almost every page,

and is invariably full. When Stevenson came to grief on the Moon in

_Prince Otto_, he declared that the next time he wrote a novel, he

should use an almanac. He unwittingly laid his finger on a weak spot in

German fiction. The almanac is, after all, what is most sorely needed.

Even Herr Sudermann, for whom we entertain the highest respect, places

in _Es War_ a young crescent Moon in the eastern sky! But it is in his

story, _Der Katzensteg_, that the lunar orb plays its heaviest role. It

rises so constantly that after a time the very words "_der Mond_" get

on one's nerves. At the climax, when the lover looks down on the stream,

he there beholds the dead body of his sweetheart. By some scientific

process, "unknown to me and which 'twere well to know," she is floating

on her back in the water, while the Moon illumines her face, leaving the

rest of her remains in darkness. This constitutes a striking picture;

and is also of material assistance to the man in locating the

whereabouts of the girl. He descends, rescues her from the flood, and

digs a grave in which to bury her. The Moon actively and dramatically

takes part in this labour. Finally, he has lowered the corpse into the

bottom of the cavity. The Moon now shines into the grave in such a

manner that the dead woman's face is bright with its rays, whereas the

rest of her body and the walls of the tomb are in obscurity. This

phenomenon naturally makes a powerful impression on the mourner's mind.

If such things can happen in the works of a writer like Sudermann, one

can easily imagine the reckless behaviour of the Moon in the common run

of German fiction. The Moon, in fact, is in German novels what the

calcium light is in American melodrama. If one "assists" at a

performance of, let us say, _No Wedding Bells for Her_, and can take his

eye a moment from the stage, he may observe up in the back gallery a

person working the calcium light, and directing its powerful beams in

such a fashion that no matter where the heroine moves, they dwell

exclusively on her face, so that we may contemplate her features

convulsed with emotion. Now in _Der Katzensteg_, the patient Moon

follows the heroine about with much the same assiduity, and accuracy of

aim. Possibly Herr Sudermann, since the composition of that work, has

really consulted an almanac; for in _Das hohe Lied_, the Moon is

practically ignored, and never gets a fair start. Toward the end, I felt

sure that it would appear, and finally, when I came to the words, "The

weary disk of the full moon (_matte Vollmondscheibe_) hung somewhere in

the dark sky," I exclaimed, "Art thou there, truepenny?"--but the next

sentence showed that the author was playing fast and loose with his old

friend. "It was the illuminated clock of a railway-station." Can

Sudermann have purposely set a trap for his moon-struck constituency?

From the astronomical point of view, I have seldom read a novel that

contained so much moonlight as _Der Katzensteg_, and I have never read

one that contained so little as _Das hohe Lied_. Perhaps Sudermann is

now quietly protesting against what he himself may regard as a national

calamity, for it is little less than that. Be this as it may, the lack

of proportion and the excess of sentimentality are two great evils that

have militated against the final success of German fiction.

Hermann Sudermann was born at a little village in East Prussia, near the

Russian frontier. The natal landscape is dull, depressing, gloomy, and

the skies are low and threatening. The clouds return after the rain.

Dame Care has spread her grey wings over the flat earth, and neither the

scenery nor the quality of the air are such as to inspire hope and

vigour. The boy's parents were desperately poor, and the bitter

struggles with poverty so frequently described in his novels are

reminiscent of early experiences. In the beautiful and affectionate

verses, which constitute the dedication to his father and mother, and

which are placed at the beginning of _Frau Sorge_, these privations of

the Sudermann household are dwelt on with loving tenderness. At the age

of fourteen, the child was forced to leave school, and was apprenticed

to a chemist--something that recalls chapters in the lives of Keats and

of Ibsen. But, like most boys who really long for a good education,

Sudermann obtained it; he continued his studies in private, and later

returned to school at Tilsit. In 1875 he attended the University at

Koenigsberg, and in 1877 migrated to the University of Berlin. His first

impulse was to become a teacher, and he spent several years in a wide

range of studies in philosophy and literature. Then he turned to

journalism, and edited a political weekly. He finally forsook journalism

for literature, and for the last twenty years he has been known in every

part of the intellectual world.

Like Mr. J. M. Barrie, Signor D'Annunzio, and other contemporaries,

Sudermann has achieved high distinction both as a novelist and as a

dramatist. Indeed, one of the signs of the times is the recruiting of

playwrights from the ranks of trained experts in prose fiction. It may

perhaps be regarded as one more evidence of the approaching supremacy of

the Drama, which many literary prophets have foretold. After he had

published a small collection of "Zwanglose Geschichten," called _Im

Zwielicht_, Sudermann issued his first real novel, _Dame Care_ (_Frau

Sorge_). This was followed by two tales bound together under the heading

_Geschwister_, one of them being the morbidly powerful story, _The Wish_

(_Der Wunsch_). Soon after came _Der Katzensteg_, translated into

English with the title, _Regina_. Then, after a surprisingly short

interval, came his first play, _Die Ehre_ (1889), which appeared in the

same year as his rival Hauptmann's first drama, _Vor Sonnenaufgang_.

_Die Ehre_ created a tremendous sensation, and Sudermann was excitedly

read and discussed far beyond the limits of his native land. He reached

a wild climax of popularity a few years later with his play _Heimat_

(English version _Magda_), which has been presented by the greatest

actresses in the world, and is familiar to everybody. With the exception

of the long novel, _Es War_ (English translation, _The Undying Past_),

which appeared in 1894, Sudermann devoted himself exclusively to the

stage for almost twenty years, and most of us believed he had definitely

abandoned novel-writing. From 1889 to 1909, he produced nineteen plays,

nearly every one of them successful. Then last year he astonished

everybody by publishing a novel of over six hundred closely printed

pages, called _Das hohe Lied_, translated into English as _The Song of

Songs_. This has had an enormous success, and for 1908-1909, is the best

selling work of fiction in the large cities of Germany.

The immense vogue of his early plays had much to do with the wide

circulation of his previously published novels. Despite the now

universally acknowledged excellence of _Frau Sorge_, it attracted, at

the time of its appearance, very little attention. It is going beyond

the facts to say with one German critic that "it dropped stillborn from

the press"; but it did not give the author anything like the fame he

deserved. After the first night of _Die Ehre_, the public became

inquisitive. A search was made for everything the new author had

written, and the two novels _Frau Sorge_, and the very recent

_Katzensteg_, were fairly pounced upon. The small stock on hand was

immediately exhausted, and the presses poured forth edition after

edition. At first _Der Katzensteg_ received the louder tribute of

praise; it was hailed by many otherwise sane critics as the greatest

work of fiction that Germany had ever produced. But after the tumult and

the shouting died, the people recognised the superiority of the former

novel. To-day _Der Katzensteg_ is, comparatively speaking, little read,

and one seldom hears it mentioned. _Frau Sorge_, on the other hand, has

not only attained more editions than any other work, either play or

novel, by its author, but it bears the signs that mark a classic. It is

one of the very few truly great German novels, and it is possible that

this early written story will survive everything that Sudermann has

since produced, which is saying a good deal. It looks like a fixed star.

Sudermann's four novels, _Frau Sorge_, _Der Katzensteg_, _Es War_, and

_Das hohe Lied_, show a steady progression in Space as well as in Time.

The first is the shortest; the second is larger; the third is a long

book; the fourth is a leviathan. If novelists were heard for their much

speaking, the order of merit in this output would need no comment. But

the first of these is almost as superior in quality as it is inferior in

size. When the author prepared it for the press, he was an absolutely

unknown man. Possibly he put more work on it than went into the other

books, for it apparently bears the marks of careful revision. It is a

great exception to the ordinary run of German novels in its complete

freedom from superfluous and clogging detail. Turgenev used to write his

stories originally at great length, and then reduce them to a small

fraction of their original bulk, before offering them to the public. We

thus receive the quintessence of his thought and of his art. Now _Frau

Sorge_ has apparently been subjected to some such process. Much of the

huge and varied cargo of ideas, reflections, comments, and speculations

carried by the regulation German freight-novel of heavy draught, has

here been jettisoned. Then the craft itself has been completely

remodelled, and the final result is a thing of grace and beauty.

_Frau Sorge_ is an admirable story in its absolute unity, in its

harmonious development, and in its natural conclusion. I do not know of

any other German novel that has a more attractive outline. It ought to

serve as an example to its author's countrymen.

It is in a way an anatomy of melancholy. It is written throughout in the

minor key, and the atmosphere of melancholy envelops it with as much

natural charm as though it were a beautiful piece of music. The book is

profoundly sad, without any false sentiment and without any revolting

coarseness. It is as far removed from the silly sentimentality so

common in Teutonic fiction, as it is from the filth of Zola or of Gorky.

The deep melancholy of the story is as natural to it as a cloudy sky.

The characters live and move and have their being in this grey medium,

which fits them like a garment; just as in the early tales of Bjoernson

we feel the strong sunshine and the sharp air. The early environment of

the young author, the depressing landscape of his boyhood days, the

daily fight with grim want in his father's house--all these elements are

faithfully reflected here, and lend their colour to the narrative. And

this surrounding melancholy, though it overshadows the whole book, is

made to serve an artistic purpose. It contrasts favourably with Ibsen's

harsh bitterness, with Gorky's maudlin dreariness, and with the

hysterical outbursts of pessimism from the manikins who try to see life

from the mighty shoulders of Schopenhauer. At the very heart of the work

we find no sentiment of revolt against life, and no cry of despair, but

true tenderness and broad sympathy. It is the clear expression of a

rich, warm nature.

The story is realistic, with a veil of Romanticism. The various scenes

of the tale seem almost photographically real. The daily life on the

farm, the struggles with the agricultural machine, the peat-bogs, the

childish experiences at school, the brutality of the boys, the graphic

picture of the funeral,--these would not be out of place in a genuine

experimental novel. But we see everything through an imaginative medium,

like the impalpable silver-grey mist on the paintings of Andrea del

Sarto. The way in which the difficult conception of _Frau Sorge_--part

woman, part vague abstraction--is managed, reminds one in its shadowy

nature of Nathaniel Hawthorne. This might have been done clumsily, as in

a crude fairy-tale, but it exhibits the most subtle art. The first

description of Frau Sorge by the mother, the boy's first glimpse of the

supernatural woman, his father's overcoat, the Magdalene in church, the

flutter of Frau Sorge's wings,--all this gives us a realistic story, and

yet takes us into the borderland between the actual and the unknown.

From one point of view we have a plain narrative of fact; from another

an imaginative poem, and at the end we feel that both have been

marvellously blended.

The simplicity of the style gives the novel a high rank in German prose.

It has that naive quality wherein the Germans so greatly excel writers

in other languages. It is a surprising fact that this tongue, so full of

difficulties for foreigners, and which seems often so confused and

involved, can, in the hands of a master, be made to speak like a little

child. The literary style of _Frau Sorge_ is naive without ever being

trivial or absurd. It is pleasant to observe, by the way, that to some

extent this book is filling the place in American educational programmes

of German that _L'Abbe Constantin_ has for so long a time occupied in

early studies of French. Both novels are masterpieces of simplicity.

But what we remember the most vividly, years after we have finished this

story, is not its scenic background, nor its unearthly charm, nor the

grace of its style; it is the character and temperament of the boy-hero.

It is the first, and possibly the best, of Sudermann's remarkable

psychological studies. The whole interest is centred in young Paul. He

is not exactly the normal type of growing boy,--compare him with Tom

Sawyer!--but because he is not ordinary, it does not follow that he is

unnatural. To many thoroughly respectable Philistine readers, he may

appear not only abnormal, but impossible; but the book was not intended

for Philistines. I believe that this boy is absolutely true to life,

though I do not recall at this moment any other novel where this

particular kind of youth occupies the centre of the stage.

For _Frau Sorge_ is a careful study and analysis of _bashfulness_, a

characteristic that causes more exquisite torture to many boys and girls

than is commonly recognised. Many of us, when we laugh at a boy's

bashfulness, are brutal, when we mean to be merely jocular. Paul is

intensely self-conscious. He is not at all like a healthy, practical,

objective child, brought up in a large family, and surrounded by the

noisy progeny of neighbours. His life is perforcedly largely subjective.

He would give anything could he associate with schoolmates with the ease

that makes a popular boy sure of his welcome. His accursed timidity

makes him invariably show his most awkward and unattractive side. He is

not in the least a _Weltkind_. He has none of the coarseness and none of

the clever shirking of work and study so characteristic of the perfectly

normal small boy. He does his duty _without any reservations_, and

without understanding why. The narrative of his mental life is deeply

pathetic. It is impossible to read the book without a lump in the

throat.

Paul is finally saved from himself by the redeeming power of love. The

little heroine Elsbeth is shadowy,--a merely conventional picture of

hair, complexion, and eyes,--but she is, after all, _das Ewigweibliche_,

and draws Paul upward and onward. She rescues him from the Slough of

Despond. There is no touch of cynicism here. Sudermann shows us the

healing power of a good woman's heart.

The next novel, _Der Katzensteg_, is more pretentious than _Frau Sorge_,

but not nearly so fine a book. It abounds in dramatic scenes, and glows

with fierce passion. It seems more like a melodrama than a story, and

it is not surprising that its author immediately discovered--perhaps in

the very composition of this romance--his genius for the stage. It is a

historical novel, but the chief interest, as always in Sudermann, is

psychological. The element of Contrast--so essential to true drama, and

which is so strikingly employed in _Die Ehre_, _Sodoms Ende_, _Heimat_,

and _Johannes_--is the mainspring of _Der Katzensteg_. We have here the

irrepressible conflict between the artificial and the natural. The

heroine of the story is a veritable child of nature, with absolutely

elemental passions, as completely removed from civilisation as a wild

beast. She was formerly the mistress of the hero's father, and for a

long time is naturally regarded with loathing by the son. But she

transfers her dog-like fidelity from the dead parent to the morbid scion

of the house. The more cruelly the young man treats her, the deeper

becomes her love for him. Nor does he at first suspect the hold she has

on his heart. He imagines himself to be in love with the pastor's

daughter in the village, who has been brought up like a hothouse plant.

This simpering, affected girl, who has had all the advantages of careful

nurture and education, is throughout the story contrasted with the wild

flower, Regina. The contrast is thorough--mental, moral, physical. The

educated girl has no real mind; she has only accomplishments. Her

morality has nothing to do with the heart; it is a bundle of

conventions. And finally, while Regina has a magnificent, voluptuous

physique, the hero discovers--by the light of the moon--that the lady of

his dreams is too thin! This is unendurable. He rushes away from the

town to the heights where stands his lonely dwelling, cursing himself

for his folly in being so long blind to the wonderful charm and devotion

of the passionate girl who, he feels sure, is waiting for him. He

hastens on the very wings of love, wild with his new-found happiness.

But the very fidelity of the child of nature has caused her death. She

stood out on the bridge--_der Katzensteg_--to warn her lover of his

danger. There she is shot by her drunken father, and the impatient lover

sees her dead body in the stream below.

Now he has leisure to reflect on what a fool he has been. He sees how

much nobler are natural passions than artificial conventions. Regina had

lived "on the other side of good and evil," knowing and caring nothing

for the standards of society. The entire significance of the novel is

summed up in this paragraph:--

"And as he thought and pondered, it seemed to him as if the clouds

which separate the foundations of human being from human

consciousness" (that is, things as they are from our conceptions of

them,--_den Boden des menschlichen Seins vom menschlichen

Bewusstsein_) "were dispersed, and he saw a space deeper than men

commonly see, into the depths of the unconscious. That which men

call Good and Bad, moved restless in the clouds around the surface;

below, in dreaming strength, lay the _Natural_ (_das Natuerliche_).

'Whom Nature has blessed,' he said to himself, 'him she lets safely

grow in her dark depths and allows him to struggle boldly toward

the light, without the clouds of Wisdom and Error surrounding and

bewildering him.'"

But there is nothing new or original in this doctrine, however daring it

may be. One can find it all in Nietzsche and in Rousseau. The best thing

about the novel is that it once more illustrates Sudermann's sympathy

for the outcast and the despised.

An extraordinarily powerful study in morbid psychology is shown in one

of his short stories, called _Der Wunsch_. The tale is told backward. It

begins with the discovery of a horrible suicide, the explanation of

which is furnished to the prostrated lover by the dead woman's

manuscript. A man and his wife, at first happily married, encounter the

dreadful obstacles of poverty and disease; the fatal illness of his wife

plunges the husband into a hard, bitter melancholy. From this he is

partially saved by the appearance of his wife's younger sister on the

scene, who comes to take care of the sick woman. The close companionship

of the two, previously fond of each other, and now united daily by their

care of the invalid, results in love; but both are absolutely loyal to

the suffering wife. They cannot help thinking, however, of the wonderful

happiness that might be theirs, were the man free; nevertheless, they do

everything possible to solace the last hours of the woman for whom they

feel an immense compassion. One night, as the sister watches at the

bedside, and gazes on the face of her sister, she suddenly feels the

uncontrollable and fatal _wish_--"Would that she might die!" She is so

smitten with remorse that after the death of the invalid she commits

suicide. For although her wish had nothing to do with this event, she

nevertheless regards herself as a murderer, and goes to self-execution.

The physician remarks that this psychological _wish_ is not uncommon;

that during his professional services he has often seen it legibly

written on the faces of relatives by the bedside--sometimes actuated by

avarice, sometimes by other forms of personal greed.

The next regular novel, _Es War_, is the study of a past sin on a man's

character, temperament, and conduct. The hero, Leo, has committed

adultery with the wife of a disagreeable husband, and, being challenged

by the latter to a duel, has killed him. Thus having broken two of the

commandments, he departs for South America, where for four years he

lives a joyous, care-free, savage existence, with murder and sensuality

a regular part of the day's work. It is perhaps a little hard on South

America that Leo could live there in such liberty and return to Germany

unscathed by the arm of the law; but this is essential to the story. He

returns a kind of Superman, rejoicing in his magnificent health and

absolutely determined to repent nothing. He will not allow the past to

obscure his happiness. But unfortunately his friend Ulrich, whom he has

loved since childhood with an affection passing the love of women, has

married the guilty widow, in blissful unconsciousness of his friend's

guilt. And here the story opens. It is a long, depressing, but intensely

interesting tale. At the very close, when it seems that wholesale

tragedy is inevitable, the clouds lift, and Leo, who has found the Past

stronger than he, regains something of the cheerfulness that

characterises his first appearance in the narrative. Nevertheless _es

war_; the Past cannot be lightly tossed aside or forgotten. It comes

near wrecking the lives of every important character in the novel. Yet

the idea at the end seems to be that although sin entails fearful

punishment, and the scars can never be obliterated, it is possible to

triumph over it and find happiness once more. The most beautiful and

impressive thing in _Es War_ is the friendship between the two men--so

different in temperament and so passionately devoted to each other. A

large group of characters is splendidly kept in hand, and each is

individual and clearly drawn. One can never forget the gluttonous,

wine-bibbing Parson, who comes eating and drinking, but who is a terror

to publicans and sinners.

Last year appeared _Das hohe Lied_, which, although it lacks the morbid

horror of much of Sudermann's work, is the most pessimistic book he has

ever written. The irony of the title is the motive of the whole novel.

Between the covers of this thick volume we find the entire detailed

life-history of a woman. She passes through much debauchery, and we

follow her into many places where we should hesitate to penetrate in

real life. But the steps in her degradation are not put in, as they so

often are in Guy de Maupassant, merely to lend spice to the narrative;

every event has a definite influence on the heroine's character. The

story, although very long, is strikingly similar to that in a recent

successful American play, _The Easiest Way_. Lilly Czepanek is not

naturally base or depraved. The manuscript roll of her father's musical

composition, _Das hohe Lied_, which she carries with her from childhood

until her final submission to circumstances, and which saves her body

from suicide but not her soul from death, is emblematic of the _elan_

which she has in her heart. With the best intentions in the world, with

noble, romantic sentiments, with a passionate desire to be a rescuing

angel to the men and women whom she meets, she gradually sinks in the

mire, until, at the end, her case is hopeless. She struggles

desperately, but each struggle finds her stock of resistance reduced.

She always ends by taking the easiest way. Like a person in a quicksand,

every effort to escape sinks the body deeper; or, like a drowning man,

the more he raises his hands to heaven, the more speedy is his

destruction. Much of Lilly's degradation is caused by what she believes

to be an elevating altruistic impulse. And when she finally meets the

only man in her whole career who respects her in his heart, who really

means well by her, and whose salvation she can accomplish along with her

own,--one single evening, where she begins with the best of intentions

and with a sincere effort toward a higher plane, results in complete

damnation. Then, like the heroine in _The Easiest Way_, she determines

to commit suicide, and really means to do it. But the same weakness that

has made it hitherto impossible for her to triumph over serious

obstacles, prevents her from taking this last decisive step. As she

hears the splash of her talisman in the cold, dark water, she realises

that she is not the stuff of which heroines are made, either in life or

in death.

"And as she heard that sound, then she knew instantly that she

would _never_ do it.--No indeed! Lilly Czepanek was _no_ Heroine.

_No_ martyr of her love was Lilly Czepanek. No Isolde, who in the

determination not to be, sees the highest self-assertion. She was

only a poor brittle, crushed, broken thing, who must drag along

through her days as best she can."

And with this realisation she goes wearily back to a rich lover she had

definitely forsaken, knowing that in saving her life she has now lost it

for ever.

This is the last page of the story, but unfortunately it does not end

here. Herr Sudermann has chosen to add one paragraph after the word

"_Schluss_." By this we learn that in the spring of the following year

the aforesaid rich lover _marries_ Lilly, and takes her on a bridal trip

to Italy, which all her life had been in her dreams the celestial

country. She is thus saved from the awful fate of the streets, which

during the whole book had loomed threatening in the distance. But this

ending leaves us completely bewildered and depressed. It seems to imply

that, after all, these successive steps in moral decline do not make

much difference, one way or the other; for at the very beginning of her

career she could not possibly have hoped for any better material fate

than this. The reader not only feels cheated; he feels that the moral

element in the story, which through all the scenes of vice has been made

clear, is now laughed at by the author. This is why I call the book the

most pessimistic of all Sudermann's writings. A novel may take us

through woe and sin, and yet not produce any impression of cynicism;

but one that makes a careful, serious study of subtle moral decay

through over six hundred pages, and then implies at the end that the

distinction between vice and virtue is, after all, a matter of no

consequence, leaves an impression for which the proverbial "bad taste in

the mouth" is utterly inadequate to describe. Some years ago, Professor

Heller, in an admirable book on Modern German Literature, remarked, in a

comparison between Hauptmann and Sudermann, that the former has no

working theory of life, which the latter possessed. That Hauptmann's

dramas offer no solution, merely giving sordid wretchedness; while

Sudermann shows the conquest of environment by character. Or, as Mr.

Heller puts it, there is the contrast between the "driving and the

drifting." I think this distinction in the main will justify itself to

anyone who makes a thoughtful comparison of the work of these two

remarkable men. Despite the depreciation of Sudermann and the idolatry

of Hauptmann, an attitude so fashionable among German critics at

present, I believe that the works of the former have shown a stronger

grasp of life. But the final paragraph of _Das hohe Lied_ is a

staggering blow to those of us who have felt that Sudermann had some

kind of a _Weltanschauung_. It is like Chopin's final movement in his

great Sonata; mocking laughter follows the solemn tones of the Funeral

March.

Up to this last bad business, _Das hohe Lied_ exhibits that

extraordinary power of psychological analysis that we have come to

expect from Sudermann. Lilly, apart from her personal beauty, is not,

after all, an interesting girl; her mind is thoroughly shallow and

commonplace. Nor are the numerous adventures through which she passes

particularly interesting. And yet the long book is by no means dull, and

one reads it with steady attention. The reason for this becomes clear,

after some reflexion. Not only are we absorbed by the contemplation of

so masterly a piece of mental analysis, but what interests us most is

the constant attempt of Lilly to analyse herself. We often wonder how

people appear to themselves. The unspoken dialogues between Lilly and

her own soul are amazingly well done. She is constantly surprised by

herself, constantly bewildered by the fact that what she thought was one

set of motives, turns out to be quite otherwise. All this comes to a

great climax in the scene late at night when she writes first one

letter, then another--each one meaning to be genuinely confessional.

Each letter is to give an absolutely faithful account of her life, with

a perfectly truthful depiction of her real character. Now the two

letters are so different that in one she appears to be a low-lived

adventuress, and in the other a noble woman, deceived through what is

noblest in her. Finally she tears both up, for she realises that

although each letter gives the facts, neither tells the truth. And then

she sees that the truth cannot be told; that life is far too complex to

be put into language.

In the attempts of German critics years ago to "classify" Sudermann, he

was commonly placed in one of the three following groups. Many insisted

that he was merely a Decadent, whose pleasure it was to deal in

unhealthy social problems. That his interest in humanity was

pathological. Others held that he was a fierce social Reformer, a kind

of John the Baptist, who wished to reconstruct modern society along

better lines, and who was therefore determined to make society realise

its own rottenness. He was primarily a Satirist, not a Decadent.

Professor Calvin Thomas quoted (without approbation) Professor Litzmann

of Bonn, who said that Sudermann was "a born satirist, not one of the

tame sort who only tickle and scratch, but one of the stamp of Juvenal,

who swings his scourge with fierce satisfaction so that the blood starts

from the soft, voluptuous flesh." A reading of _Das hohe Lied_ will

convince anyone that Sudermann, wherever he is, is not among the

prophets. Finally, there were many critics who at the very start

recognised Sudermann as primarily an artist, who chooses to paint the

aspects of life that interest him. This is undoubtedly the true

viewpoint. We may regret that he prefers to analyse human characters in

morbid and abnormal development, but that, after all, is his affair, and

we do not have to read him unless we wish to. Professor Thomas, in an

admirable article on _Das Glueck im Winkel_, contributed in 1895 to the

New York _Nation_, said, "Sudermann is a man of the world, a

psychologist, and an artist, not a voice crying in the wilderness. The

immortality of Juvenal or Jeremiah would not be to his taste." It is

vain to quarrel with the direction taken by genius; however much we may

deplore its course. Sudermann is one of the greatest, if not the

greatest, of Germany's living writers, and every play or novel from his

pen contains much material for serious thought.

VIII

ALFRED OLLIVANT

In the month of September, 1898, there appeared in America a novel with

the attractive title, _Bob, Son of Battle_. Unheralded by author's fame

or by the blare of advertisement, it was at first unnoticed; but in

about a twelvemonth everybody was talking about it. It became one of the

"best sellers"; unlike its companions, it has not vanished with the

snows of yesteryear. At this moment it is being read and reread all over

the United States. I do not believe there is a single large town in our

country where the book is unknown, or where a reference to it fails to

bring to the faces of intelligent people that glow of reminiscent

delight aroused by the memory of happy hours passed in the world of

imagination. It seemed so immensely superior to the ordinary run of new

novels, that we gazed with pardonable curiosity at the unfamiliar

signature on the title-page. Who was this writer who knew so much of the

nature of dogs and men? Where had he found that extraordinarily vivid

style, and what experiences had he passed through that gave him his

subtle insight into character? But all that we could then discover was

that Alfred Ollivant was an Englishman, and that _Bob_ was his first

novel. We decided that he must have lived long, observed all kinds of

dogs, and a large variety of men, women, and children; and that for some

reason best known to himself he had chosen to print nothing until he had

descended into the vale of years. For only the other day we were not

surprised to find that _Joseph Vance_ was the winter fruit of a man

nearly seventy; that book at any rate was the expression of a man who

had had life, and had it abundantly.

Our astonishment was keen indeed when we learned that the author of

_Bob_ was a boy just out of his teens, who had written his wonderful

book in horizontal pain and weakness. He had entered the army, receiving

his commission as a cavalry officer in 1893, at the age of nineteen; a

few weeks after this event, a fall from his horse injured his spine,

previously affected by some mysterious malady; this accident abruptly

checked his chosen military career, and made him a man of letters.

Literature owes a great deal to enforced idleness, whether the writer be

sick or in prison. The wind bloweth where it listeth; and we perceived

once more that genius does not always accompany good health, or

maturity, or ambition; it seems to select with absolute caprice the

individuals through whom it speaks. And so this first-born child of the

brain was delivered, like human infants, on a bed of suffering; being,

to complete the analogy, none the less healthy on that account. The book

was begun in 1894, when the author was twenty years old; during

intervals of physical capacity in 1895 and 1896, it was continued, and

was submitted to the publishers in 1897.

It was to have been published in the autumn, but the London firm decided

to postpone its appearance one year. The author employed these months in

completely rewriting the story, which he had named _Owd Bob_. Meanwhile,

the New York publishers, who had a copy of the original manuscript,

fearing that the title _Owd Bob_ lacked magnetism, wisely rechristened

it _Bob, Son of Battle_. And so, in September, 1898, the novel in its

first form, but with a new name, was printed in America; simultaneously

in England it appeared in a new form, but with the old name. In other

words, the London first edition, _Owd Bob_, is a thoroughly revised

version of the American first edition, _Bob, Son of Battle_, although

they were published at the same time. It does not seem as though the

author could have improved a book that so completely satisfies us as it

stands; and Americans, to whom _Owd Bob_ is unknown, may not believe

that it can be superior to _Bob, Son of Battle_. Nevertheless it is. The

two versions are of course alike in general features of the plot and in

outline; but no one who has read both can hesitate an instant. One has

only to compare the manner in which Red Wull made his _debut_ in America

with the chapter where he first appears (in a totally different way) in

the English edition, to see how clearly second thoughts were best.

And yet, despite the enormous popularity of _Bob, Son of Battle_ in the

United States, and despite the fact that Englishmen had the opportunity

to read the story in a still finer form, it has not until very recently

made any impression on British readers or on London critics. Is it

possible that a book, like a dog, may be killed by a bad name? The novel

was written by an Englishman, the scenes were laid in Britain, it dealt

with manners and customs peculiarly English, and it was aimed directly

at an English public. And yet, for nearly ten years after its

publication, _Owd Bob_ remained in obscurity.[12] But its day is coming,

and the prophet will yet receive honour in his own country. In 1908 it

was reprinted in a seven-pence edition, of which fifty thousand copies

have already seen the light. This is nothing to the American

circulation; but it is promising. Bearing in mind the futility of

literary prophecy, I still believe that the day will come when _Owd Bob_

will be generally recognised as belonging to English literature.

[12] A year or two ago I asked one of the foremost English dramatists,

one of the foremost English novelists, and one of the foremost English

critics, men whose names are known everywhere in America, if they had

read _Bob_; not one of them had ever heard of the book.

The splendid fidelity and devotion of the dog to his master have

certainly been in part repaid by men of letters in all stages of the

world's history. A valuable essay might be written on the dog's

contributions to literature; in the poetry of the East, hundreds of

years before Christ, the poor Indian insisted that his four-footed

friend should accompany him into eternity. We know that this bit of

Oriental pathos impressed Pope:--

"But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,

His faithful dog shall bear him company."

One of the most profoundly affecting incidents in the _Odyssey_ is the

recognition of the ragged Ulysses by the noble old dog, who dies of joy.

During the last half-century, since the publication of Dr. John Brown's

_Rab and his Friends_ (1858), the dog has approached an apotheosis.

Among innumerable sketches and stories with canine heroes may be

mentioned Bret Harte's brilliant portrait of _Boonder_; Maeterlinck's

essay on dogs; Richard Harding Davis's _The Bar Sinister_; Stevenson's

whimsical comments on _The Character of Dogs_; Kipling's _Garm_; and

Jack London's initial success, _The Call of the Wild_.[13] But all these

latter-day pamphlets, good as they are, fail to reach the excellence of

_Bob, Son of Battle_. It is the best dog story ever written, and it

inspires regret that dogs cannot read.

[13] One may fairly class with this literature the remarkable speech on

dogs delivered in his youth in a courtroom by the late Senator Vest. The

speech won the case against the evidence.

No one who knows Mr. Ollivant's tale can by any possibility forget the

Grey Dog of Kenmuir--the perfect, gentle knight--or the thrilling

excitement of his successful struggles for the cup. He is indeed a noble

and beautiful character, with the Christian combination of serpent and

dove. But Owd Bob in a slight degree shares the fate of all beings who

approach moral perfection. He reminds us at times of Tennyson's Arthur

in the _Idylls of the King_, though he fortunately delivers no lectures.

Lancelot was wicked, and Arthur was good; but Lancelot has the touch of

earth that makes him interesting, and Arthur has more than a touch of

boredom. In _Paradise Lost_ the spotless Raphael does not compare in

charm with the picturesque Foe of God and Man. The real hero in Milton,

as I suspect the poet very well knew, is the Devil; and if Mr. Ollivant

had ignored both English and American godfathers, and called his novel

_The Tailless Tyke_, no reader could have objected. Red Wull is the

Satan of this canine epic; he has for us a fascination at once horrible

and irresistible. The author seems to have felt that the Grey Dog was

overshadowed; and he has saved our active sympathy for him by the clever

device of making him at one time dangerously ill, when we realise how

much we love him; and finally by throwing him under awful suspicion,

that we may experience--as we certainly do--the enormous relief of

beholding him guiltless. But in spite of our best instincts, Red Wull is

the protagonist. Dog and master have never been matched in a more

sinister manner than Adam McAdam and the Tailless Tyke. Bill Sikes and

his companion are nothing to it, and we cannot help remembering that to

the eternal disgrace of dogs, Bill Sikes's last friend forsook him.

Compared with Red Wull, the Hound of the Baskervilles is a pet lapdog.

When Adam and Wullie appear upon the scene, we look alive, even as their

virtuous enemies were forced to do, for we know something is bound to

happen. When the little man is greeted with a concert of hoots and

jeers, we cannot repress some sympathy for him, akin to our feeling

toward the would-be murderer Shylock, silent and solitary under the

noisy taunts of the feather-headed Gratiano. This bitter and lonely

wretch is a real character, and his strange personality is presented

with extraordinary skill. There is not a single false touch from first

to last; and the little man with the big dog abides in our memory. Red

Wull is the hero of a hundred fights; his tremendous and terrible

exploits are the very essence of piratical romance. After he has slain

the two huge beasts of the showman, McAdam exclaims with a sob of

paternal pride, "Ye play so rough, Wullie!"

And the death of the Tailless Tyke is positively Homeric. The other

dogs, all his ruthless enemies, whisper to each other and silently steal

from the room. They know that the hour has struck, and that this will be

the last fight. The whole pack set upon him, each one goaded by the

remembrance of some murdered relative, or by some humiliating scar. Red

Wull asks nothing better than meeting them all; and the unequal combat

becomes a frightful carnage. At the very end, as much exhausted by the

labour of killing as by his own wounds, the great dog--now red

indeed--hears his master's familiar cry, "Wullie, to me!" and with a

super-canine effort he raises his dying form from the bottom of the

writhing mass, shakes off the surviving foes, and slowly staggers to

McAdam's feet. Like Samson, the dead which he slew at his death were

more than they which he slew in his life.

Mr. Ollivant's next book, _Danny_, also a dog story, was not nearly so

effective. The human characters command the most attention, though the

old man with the weeping eye becomes a bit wearisome. The passages of

pure nature description are often exquisitely written, and prove that at

heart the author is a poet. But in the narrative portions there is an

unfortunate attempt to conceal the slightness of the story by preciosity

and affectation in the style. For the simple truth is that in _Danny_

there is no story worth the telling. We recall distinctly the lovely

young wife and her grim ironclad of a husband, but just what happened

between the covers of the book escapes us. Although Mr. Ollivant

believes in _Danny_, in spite of or because of its lack of popularity,

he was so dissatisfied with the American edition that he suppressed it.

Such an act is an indication of the high artistic standard that he has

set for himself; ambitious as he is, he would rather merit fame than

have it.

While the readers of _Bob_ and of _Danny_ were guessing what kind of a

dog the young author would select for his next novel, he surprised us

all by writing an uncaninical work. This story, adorned with happy

illustrations, and printed in big type, as though for the eyes of

children, was called _Red-Coat Captain_, and was enigmatically located

in "That Country." Every American publisher to whom the manuscript was

offered, rejected it, saying emphatically that it was nonsense; and if

there had not been a strain of idealism in the Head of the firm that

reconsidered and finally printed it, the book would probably never have

felt the press. Mr. Ollivant was sure that the story would appeal at

first only to a very few, and he requested the publisher not only to

refrain from issuing any advertisement, but to make the entire first

edition consist of only three copies--one for the archives of the House,

one for the author, and one for a believing friend. The children of this

world are wiser in their generation than the children of light; and the

shrewd man of business did not take the petition very seriously. The

verdict Nonsense has been loudly ratified by many reviewers and readers;

to the few it has been wisdom, to the many foolishness. For, as was said

years ago of a certain poem, "The capacity to understand such a work

must be spiritual." It matters not how clever one may be, how well read,

how sensitive to artistic beauties and defects; qualities of a totally

different nature must be present, and even then the time and place must

be right, if one is to seize the inner meaning of _Red-Coat Captain_. I

was about to say, the inner meaning of a story _like_ _Red-Coat

Captain_, but I was stopped by the thought that no story like it has

ever been published, and perhaps never will be. Both conception and

expression are profoundly original, and, in spite of some failure of

articulation, the work is strongly marked with genius. It is an allegory

based on the eleventh and twelfth commandments, which we have good

authority for believing are worth all the ten put together. From one

point of view it is a book for children; the mysterious setting of the

tale is sure to appeal to certain imaginative boys and girls. But the

early chapters, dealing with the pretty courtship and the honeymoon,

will be fully appreciated only by those who have some years to their

credit or otherwise. There is in this story the ineffable charm and

fragrance of purity. It is the lily in its author's garden.

Mr. Ollivant's latest novel is the most conventional of the four, and

wholly unlike any of its predecessors. It is a rattling, riotous

romance, placed in the troublous times of the Napoleonic wars. The

mighty shadow of Nelson falls darkly across the narrative, but the

author has not committed the sin--so common in historical romances--of

making a historical character the chief of the _dramatis personae_. The

title role is played by _The Gentleman_, and he is a hero worthy of

Cooper or of Stevenson. Marked by reckless audacity, brilliant in

swordplay and in horsemanship, clever in turn of speech, gifted with the

manner of a pre-Revolution Duke--what more in the heroic line can a

reader desire? The architecture of the novel and the staccato paragraphs

infallibly remind one of Victor Hugo, whom, however, Mr. Ollivant does

not know. Nor, outside of the works of Stevenson, have we ever seen a

story minus love so steadily interesting. It is an amphibious book, and

those who like fighting on land and sea may have their fill. The

percentage of mortality is high; soldiers and sailors die numerously,

and the hideous details of death are worthy of _La Debacle_; there is a

welter of gore. If this were all that could be said, if the fascination

of this romance depended wholly on the crowded action, it would simply

be one more exciting tale added to the hundreds published every year;

good to read on train and turbine, but not worth serious attention or

criticism. But the incidents, while frequent and thrilling, are not, at

least to the discriminating reader, the main thing, as the Germans say.

Nor is the construction, clever enough, nor the characters, real as they

are; the main thing is the style, which, quite different from that in

his former books, is yet all his own. The style, in the best sense of

the word, is pictorial; it transforms the past into the present. The

succession of events rolls off like a glowing panorama. It is perhaps

natural that many reviewers should have praised _The Gentleman_ more

highly than all the rest of Mr. Ollivant's work put together; but,

notwithstanding its wider appeal, it lacks the permanent qualities of

_Bob_, and (I believe) of _Red-Coat Captain_, for they are original.

That Mr. Ollivant is now on the road to physical health will be good

news. He has already done work that no one else can do, and we cannot

spare him. His four novels indicate versatility as well as much greater

gifts; and he should be watched by all who take an interest in

contemporary literature and who believe that the future is as rich as

the past. _Bob_ looks like the best English novel that has appeared

between _Tess of the D'Urbervilles_ in 1891, and _Joseph Vance_ in 1906.

Nothing but bodily obstacles can prevent its author from going far.

IX

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

Stevenson spent his life, like an only and lonely child, in playing

games with himself. Most boys who read romances have the dramatic

instinct; they must forthwith incarnate the memories of their reading,

and anything will do for a _mise en scene_. The mudpuddle becomes an

ocean, where the pirate ship is launched; a scrubby apple tree has

infinite possibilities. Armed with a wooden sword, the child sallies

forth in the rain, and fiercely cuts down the mulleins; could we only

see him without being seen, we should observe the wild light in his eye,

and the frown of battle on his brow. He walks cautiously in the

underbrush, to surprise the ambushed foe; and it is with rapture that he

goes to sleep in a tent, pitched six yards from the kitchen door. This

spirit of adventure remains in some men's hearts, even after the hair

has grown grey or gone; they hear the call of the wild, lock up the

desk, go into the woods, and there rejoice in a process of

decivilisation.

In order to enjoy life, one must love it; and nobody ever loved life

more than Stevenson. "It is better to be a fool than to be dead," said

he. To him the world was always picturesque, whether he saw it through

the mists of Edinburgh, or amid the snows of Davos, or in the tropical

heat of Samoa. "Where is Samoa?" asked a friend. "Go out of the Golden

Gate," replied Stevenson, "and take the first turn to the left." This

counsel makes up in joyous imagination what it lacks in latitude and

longitude. Everything in Stevenson's bodily and mental life was an

adventure, to be begun in a spirit of reckless enthusiasm. In his

travels with a donkey, he was a beloved vagabond, whose wayside

acquaintances are to be envied; in compulsory expeditions in search of

health, he set out with as much zest as though he were after buried

treasure; everything was an adventure, and his marriage was the greatest

adventure of all. He read books with the same enthusiasm with which he

tramped, or paddled in a canoe; every new novel he opened with the

spirit of an explorer, for who knows in its pages what people one may

meet? William Archer sent him a copy of Bernard Shaw's story, _Cashel

Byron's Profession_, and Stevenson wrote in reply from Saranac Lake,

"Over Bashville the footman I howled with derision and delight; I dote

on Bashville--I could read of him for ever; _de Bashville je suis le

fervent_--there is only one Bashville, and I am his devoted slave....

It is all mad, mad and deliriously delightful.... It is HORRID FUN....

(I say, Archer, my God, what women!)" What would authors give for a

reading public like that?

Prone in bed, when his attention was not diverted by a hemorrhage, he

lived amid the pageantry of gorgeous day-dreams, presented on the stage

of his brain. We know that Ben Jonson saw the Romans and Carthaginians

fighting, marching and countermarching, across his great toe. Stevenson

would have understood this perfectly. No pain or sickness ever daunted

him, or held him captive; his mind was always in some picturesque or

immensely interesting place. In composition, he seemed to have a double

consciousness; he moulded his sentences with the fastidious care of a

great artist; at the same moment he felt the growing sea-breeze, and

knew that his hero would very soon have to shorten sail.

It is pleasant to remember that a man who had such genius for

friendship, who so generously admired the literary work of his

contemporaries, and who loved the whole world of saints and sinners,

received such widespread homage in return. His career as a man of

letters extended over twenty years; and during the last eight his name

was actually a household word. To be sure, he published much work of a

high order without getting even a hearing; his _Inland Voyage_,

_Travels with a Donkey_, _Virginibus Puerisque_, _Familiar Studies_,

_New Arabian Nights_, and even _Treasure Island_, attracted very little

attention; he remained in obscurity. But when, in the year 1886,

appeared the _Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_, he found himself

famous; the thrilling excitement of the story, combined with its

powerful moral appeal, simply conquered the world. And although his own

plays were failures, he had the satisfaction of knowing that thousands

of people in theatres were spellbound by the modern Morality made out of

his novel. Few writers have become "classics" in so short a time; during

the years that remained to him, he was compelled to prepare a superb

edition of his _Complete Works_. Without ever appealing to the animal

nature of humanity, he had the keen satisfaction of reigning in the

hearts of uncultivated readers, and of receiving the almost universal

tribute of refined critics. There are authors who are the delight of a

bookish few, and there are authors with an enormous public and no

reputation. There are poets like Donne, and prose-masters like Browne,

precious to the men and women of patrician taste; and there are some

familiar examples of the other kind, needless to call by name. Stevenson

pleases us all; for he always has a good story, and the subtlety of his

art gives to his narrative imperishable beauty.

Stevenson's appearance as a novelist was in itself an adventure. He

seemed at first as obsolete as a soldier of fortune. He was as

unexpected and as picturesque among contemporary writers of fiction as

an Elizabethan knight in a modern drawing-room. When he placed _Treasure

Island_ on the literary map, Realism was at its height in some

localities, and at its depth in others. But it was everywhere the

standard form, in which young writers strove to embody their visions.

Zola had just made an address in which he remarked that Walter Scott was

dead, and that the fashion of his style had passed away. The

experimental novel would go hand in hand with the advance of scientific

thought. And there were many who believed that Zola spoke the truth.

This state of affairs was a tremendous challenge to Stevenson, and he

accepted it in the spirit of chivalry. The very name of his first novel,

_Treasure Island_, was like the flying of a flag. Those critics who saw

it must have smiled, and shaken their wise heads, for had not the time

for such follies gone by? Stevenson was fully aware of what he was

doing; in the midst of contemporary fiction he felt as impatient and as

ill at ease as a boy, imprisoned in a circle of elders, whose

conversation does not in the least interest him. His sentiments are

clearly shown in a letter to the late Mr. Henley, written shortly after

the appearance of _Treasure Island_, and which is important enough to

quote somewhat fully:--

"I do desire a book of adventure--a romance--and no man will get or

write me one. Dumas I have read and reread too often; Scott, too,

and I am short. I want to hear swords clash. I want a book to begin

in a good way; a book, I guess, like _Treasure Island_, alas! which

I have never read, and cannot though I live to ninety. I would God

that someone else had written it! By all that I can learn, it is

the very book for my complaint. I like the way I hear it opens; and

they tell me John Silver is good fun. And to me it is, and must

ever be, a dream unrealised, a book unwritten. O my sighings after

romance, or even Skeltery, and O! the weary age which will produce

me neither!

CHAPTER I

The night was damp and cloudy, the ways foul. The single horseman,

cloaked and booted, who pursued his way across Willesden Common,

had not met a traveller, when the sound of wheels--