TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
In the plain text version text in italics is enclosed by underscores
(_italics_), and small capitals are represented in upper case as in
SMALL CAPS.
The book cover was modified by the transcriber and has been added to
the public domain.
A number of words in this book have both hyphenated and non-hyphenated
variants. For the words with both variants present the one more used
has been kept.
Obvious punctuation and other printing errors have been corrected.
* * * * *
Studying the Short-Story
SIXTEEN SHORT-STORY CLASSICS
WITH INTRODUCTIONS, NOTES AND
A NEW LABORATORY STUDY METHOD
FOR INDIVIDUAL READING AND
USE IN COLLEGES AND SCHOOLS
BY
J. BERG ESENWEIN, A.M., LIT.D.
EDITOR OF THE WRITER’S MONTHLY
REVISED EDITION
THE WRITER’S LIBRARY
EDITED BY J. BERG ESENWEIN
HINDS, HAYDEN & ELDREDGE, INC.
NEW YORK PHILADELPHIA CHICAGO
Copyright 1912
BY J. BERG ESENWEIN
Copyright 1918
BY J. BERG ESENWEIN
TO
MOTHER
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
TO TEACHERS AND STUDENTS vii
PUBLISHERS’ NOTE xi
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF THE
SHORT-STORY xiii
I. STORIES OF ACTION AND ADVENTURE 1
MÉRIMÉE AND HIS WRITINGS 4
“Mateo Falcone,” _Prosper Mérimée_ 8
STEVENSON AND HIS WRITINGS 29
“A Lodging for the Night,” _Robert Louis Stevenson_ 34
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS FOR STUDY 67
TEN REPRESENTATIVE STORIES OF ACTION AND ADVENTURE 68
II. STORIES OF MYSTERY AND FANTASY 69
POE AND HIS WRITINGS 72
“The Purloined Letter,” _Edgar Allan Poe_ 76
JACOBS AND HIS WRITINGS 108
“The Monkey’s Paw,” _W. W. Jacobs_ 111
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS FOR STUDY 129
TEN REPRESENTATIVE STORIES OF MYSTERY AND FANTASY 130
III. STORIES OF EMOTION 131
DAUDET AND HIS WRITINGS 135
“The Last Class,” _Alphonse Daudet_ 139
KIPLING AND HIS WRITINGS 147
“Without Benefit of Clergy,” _Rudyard Kipling_ 151
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS FOR STUDY 189
TEN REPRESENTATIVE STORIES OF EMOTION OR SENTIMENT 190
IV. HUMOROUS STORIES 191
HENRY AND HIS WRITINGS 194
“The Ransom of Red Chief,” _O. Henry_ 198
BARRIE AND HIS WRITINGS 215
“The Courting of T’Nowhead’s Bell,” _James M. Barrie_ 219
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS FOR STUDY 249
TEN REPRESENTATIVE HUMOROUS STORIES 250
V. STORIES OF SETTING 251
HARTE AND HIS WRITINGS 255
“The Outcasts of Poker Flat,” _Bret Harte_ 259
MAUPASSANT AND HIS WRITINGS 277
“Moonlight,” _Guy de Maupassant_ 281
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS FOR STUDY 290
TEN REPRESENTATIVE STORIES OF SETTING 290
VI. IMPRESSIONISTIC STORIES 291
HAWTHORNE AND HIS WRITINGS 297
“The White Old Maid,” _Nathaniel Hawthorne_ 302
“The Fall of the House of Usher,” _Edgar Allan Poe_ 320
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS FOR STUDY 351
TEN REPRESENTATIVE IMPRESSIONISTIC STORIES 352
VII. CHARACTER STUDIES 353
“The Piece of String,” _Guy de Maupassant_ 356
COPPÉE AND HIS WRITINGS 368
“The Substitute,” _François Coppée_ 371
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS FOR STUDY 388
TEN REPRESENTATIVE CHARACTER STUDIES 389
VIII. PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES 390
“Markheim,” _Robert Louis Stevenson_ 394
MORRISON AND HIS WRITINGS 422
“On the Stairs,” _Arthur Morrison_ 425
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS FOR STUDY 431
TEN REPRESENTATIVE PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES 432
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 433
INDEX 437
TO TEACHERS AND STUDENTS
Growing out of my former volume, _Writing the Short-Story_, appeared
the use for a new book that should contain a large number of
short-stories arranged and annotated in form suitable for school or
private study. Accordingly, the unique marginal arrangement for notes,
which was first used in the study of Maupassant’s “The Necklace,”
in the earlier work, was also adopted in this, with the addition of
exhaustive critical introductions and comments. Further study, whether
by classes or by individuals, has been facilitated by the reading
references upon the authors represented, and--arranged under each
of the eight type-groups--the explicit lists of ten representative
short-stories available for reading and analysis.
Five points were had in mind as a basis for the selection of the
stories included in this collection: First, the real merit of the
story, as illustrating the short-story structurally perfect, or as
nearly perfect as could be found in combination with the other points
desired; second, the typical qualities of the story, as standing
for the class it was to represent; third, its intrinsic literary
interest for the general reader; fourth, its representative quality as
illustrating the author’s tone and style; fifth, its suitability for
class and private study and analysis.
Other stories are equally brilliant and equally representative,
but some are too long to fit into such a selection; others are not
available because of publishers’ rules; still others are morally
unsuitable for the uses of mixed classes of young people; while
many capital stories are the work of authors who have not produced
consistently good work.
The tone of many of the stories included is sad, and their endings
tragic; this is accidental and has not at all governed the selection
from my belief that stories of tragic quality are necessarily the
greatest; though the tragic phases of life, being the most intense,
are the most likely to offer attractive themes to authors who prefer
to deal with strong and subtle situations. The same is true of stories
dealing with sex problems, but these have been excluded for obvious
reasons. Livelier and more cheerful stories either were not as
representative of the types I desired to exhibit, or were rejected from
other motives. Those who study these selections with a view to writing
the short-story will do well to bear in mind that fiction of gloomy
tone must be very well written and on themes of unusual power to atone
for their depressing qualities.
For the use of teachers and their pupils, a series of general questions
has been prepared (p. xxxi), besides questions at the end of each
section. Of course these will be regarded as suggestive rather than
exhaustive.
The margins left blank in the stories marked “For Analysis” may be used
for pencil notes, at the option of the teacher. For further study,
strips of writing paper may be attached to the margins of stories
cut from the magazines and full notes added by the pupil. _Writing
the Short-Story_ will be found an especially practical adjunct in
making the marginal analyses and notes, as that work gives much space
to the general structure of the short-story and an analysis of its
parts. The nomenclature of _Writing the Short-Story_ has been observed
in this volume, as well as the typographical arrangement, where
practicable--especially the practise of indicating short-stories by
quotation marks, while printing book-titles in italics.
I venture to hope that the present work may prove helpful in disclosing
to lovers of the short-story, as well as to those who wish merely
to study its technique, the means by which authors of international
distinction have secured their effects.
J. BERG ESENWEIN
Philadelphia, June 8, 1912.
NOTE TO REVISED EDITION
The only changes made in the original text are such typographical
corrections as were needed and a considerable addition to the
bibliography.
J. B. E.
Springfield, Mass., May 1, 1918.
PUBLISHERS’ NOTE
The wide usefulness of _Writing the Short-Story_, by the author of this
volume, as evidenced by its adoption for class use in the foremost
American universities, colleges, and schools, and by the many thousands
of well-known writers and younger aspirants who have found it so
helpful in their craft, has encouraged the author to undertake the
present work. Mere collections of short-stories are not lacking, but no
other volume presents an authoritative international selection, with
comprehensive classifications under leading short-story types, critical
and biographical introductions, illuminating marginal notes, and
opportunities for original study afforded by margins for the student’s
notes, together with questions and lists of stories for examination and
study. Whether used singly or as a companion volume with _Writing the
Short-Story_, it is confidently believed that the present work will
prove a notable contribution to the literature of this most popular and
significant literary form.
THE PUBLISHERS
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF THE SHORT-STORY
Fiction as an art has made more progress during the last hundred years
than any other literary type. The first half of the nineteenth century
especially developed a consciousness of subject matter and form in both
the novel and the short-story which has created an epoch as notable in
the history of fiction as was the age of Shakespeare in the progress of
the drama. In Great Britain, France, Russia, Germany, and America arose
fictional artists of distinguished ability, while in other nations
writers of scarcely less merit soon followed.
The novel demands a special study, so even for its relation to our
theme--the short-story--the reader must be referred to such works as
specialize on the longer form.[1]
A comprehensive treatment of the short-story would include an inquiry
into the origins of all short fictional forms, for every story that
is short is popularly known as a short story. The fullest and best
guide for such a study is Henry Seidel Canby’s historical and critical
treatise, _The Short Story in English_.
Naturally, an inquiry into origins would prove to be measurably
profitless and certainly dry for the general student were it not
supplemented by the reading of a great many stories--preferably in the
original--which illustrate the steps in short-story development from
earliest times.[2]
A further field for a comprehensive survey would be a critical
comparison of the modern form with its several ancestral and
contributory forms, from original sources.
A third examen would be devoted to the characteristics and tendencies
of the present-day short-story as presented in volume form and,
particularly, in the modern magazine.
A fourth, would undertake to study the rhetoric of the form.[3]
None of these sorts of study can be exhaustively presented in this
volume, yet all are touched upon so suggestively and with such full
references that the reader may himself pursue the themes with what
fullness he elects. The special field herein covered will be, I
believe, sufficiently apparent as the reader proceeds.
Let it be understood from the outstart that throughout this volume
the term short-story is used rather loosely to cover a wide variety of
short fiction; yet presently it will be necessary to show precisely
how the modern form differs from its fictive ancestors, and that
distinction will assume some importance to those who care about
recognizing the several short fictional forms and who enjoy calling
things by their exact names.
* * * * *
The first story-teller was that primitive man who in his
wanderings afield met some strange adventure and returned to his
fellows to narrate it. His narration was a true story. The first
fictionist--perhaps it was the same hairy savage--was he who, having
chosen to tell his adventure, also resolved to add to it some details
wrought of his own fancy. That was fiction, because while the story was
compounded of truth it was worked out by the aid of imagination, and
so was close kin to the story born entirely of fancy which merely uses
true-seeming things, or veritable contributory facts, to make the story
“real.”
Egyptian tales, recorded on papyrus sheets, date back six thousand
years. Adventure was their theme, while gods and heroes, beasts
and wonders, furnished their incidents. When love was introduced,
obscenities often followed, so that the ancient tales of pure adventure
are best suited to present-day reading.
What is true of Egypt 4000 B. C. is equally true of Greece many
centuries later. The Homeric stories will serve as specimens of
adventure narrative; and the Milesian tales furnish the erotic type.
As for the literary art of these early fictions, we need only refer
to ancient poetry to see how perfect was its development two thousand
and more years ago; therefore--for the poets were story-tellers--we
need not marvel at the majestic diction, poetic ideas, and dramatic
simplicity of such short-stories as the Egyptian “Tales of the
Magicians,”[4] fully six thousand years old; the Homeric legends, told
possibly twenty-five hundred years ago;[5] “The Book of Esther,”[6]
written more than twenty-one hundred years ago; and the stories by
Lucius Apuleius, in _The Golden Ass_,[7] quite two thousand years old.
In form these ancient stories were of three types: the anecdote (often
expanded beyond the normal limits of anecdote); the scenario, or
outline of what might well have been told as a longer story; and the
tale, or straightforward chain of incidents with no real complicating
plot.
Story-telling maintained much the same pace until the early middle
ages, when the sway of religious ideas was felt in every department
of life. Superstition had always vested the forces of nature with
more than natural attributes, so that the wonder tale was normally
the companion of the war or adventure story. But now the power of the
Christian religion was laying hold upon all minds, and the French
_conte dévot_, or miracle story, recited the wonderful doings of the
saints in human behalf, or told how some pious mystic had encountered
heavenly forces, triumphed over demons and monsters of evil, and
performed prodigies of piety.
These tales were loosely hung together, and exhibited none of the
compression and sense of orderly climax characteristic of the
short-story to-day. In style the early medieval stories fell far
below classic models, naturally enough, for language was feeling the
corrupting influences of that inrush of barbarian peoples which at
length brought Rome to the dust, while culture was conserved only in
out-of-the-way places. In form these narratives were chiefly the tale,
the anecdote, and the episode, by which I mean a fragmentary part of a
longer tale with which it had little or no organic connection.
The _conte dévot_ in England was even more crude, for Old English was
less polished than the speech of France and its people more heroic than
literary.
When we come to the middle of the fourteenth century we find in two
great writers a marked advancement: Chaucer’s _Canterbury Tales_
and Boccaccio’s _Decameron_--the former superior to the latter in
story-telling art--opened up rich mines of legend, adventure, humor,
and human interest. All subsequent narrators modeled their tales
after these patterns. Chaucer’s “The Pardoner’s Tale” has many
points in common with the modern short-story, and so has Boccaccio’s
_novella_, “Rinaldo,” but these approaches to what we now recognize
as the short-story type were not so much by conscious intention as
by a groping after an ideal which was only dimly existent in their
minds--so dimly, indeed, that even when once attained it seems not to
have been pursued. For the most part the _fabliaux_[8] of Chaucer and
the _novelle_[9] of Boccaccio were rambling, loosely knit, anecdotal,
lacking in the firmly fleshed contours of the modern short-story. Even
the _Gesta Romanorum_, or _Deeds of the Romans_--181 short legends and
stories first printed about 1473--show the same ear marks.
About the middle of the sixteenth century appeared _The Arabian
Nights_, that magic carpet which has carried us all to the regions of
breathless delight. The story of “Ali Baba and The Forty Thieves,”
for one, is as near an approach to our present-day short-story as was
Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle,” and quite unsurpassed in all the literature
of wonder-tales.
Thus for two thousand years--yes, for six thousand years--the
essentials of short story narration were unchanged. What progress had
been made was toward truth-seeming, clearer characterization, and a
finer human interest, yet so surpassing in these very respects are some
of the ancient stories that they remain models to-day. Chiefly, then,
the short fiction of the eighteenth century showed progress over that
of earlier centuries in that it was much more consistently produced by
a much greater number of writers--so far as our records show.
Separately interesting studies of the eighteenth-century essay-stories
of Addison, Steele, Johnson and others in the English periodicals,
the _Spectator_, _Tatler_, _Rambler_, _Idler_, and _Guardian_ might
well be made, for these forms lead us directly to Hawthorne and
Irving in America. Of almost equal value would be a study of Defoe’s
ghost stories (1727) and Voltaire’s development of the protean French
detective-story, in his “Zadig,” twenty years later.
With the opening of the nineteenth century the marks of progress
are more decided. The first thirty years brought out a score of the
most brilliant story-tellers imaginable, who differ from Poe and his
followers only in this particular--they were still perfecting the tale,
the sketch, the expanded anecdote, the episode, and the scenario, for
they had neither for themselves nor for their literary posterity set up
a new standard, as Poe was to do so very soon.
Of this fecund era were born the German weird tales of Ernst Amadeus
Hoffmann and J. L. Tieck; the _Moral Tales_ of Maria Edgeworth, and
the fictional episodes of Sir Walter Scott in Scotland; the anecdotal
tales and the novelettes of Prosper Mérimée and Charles Nodier in
France; the tales of Pushkin, the father of Russian literature; and
the tale-short-stories of Washington Irving and Nathaniel Hawthorne
in America. Here too lies a fascinating field of study, over which
to trace the approach towards that final form, so to call it, which
was both demonstrated and expounded by Poe. It must suffice here to
observe that Irving preferred the easy-flowing essay-sketch, and the
delightful, leisurely tale (with certain well-marked tendencies toward
a compact plot), rather than the closely organized plot which we
nowadays recognize as the special possession of the short-story.
In France, from 1830 to 1832, Honoré de Balzac produced a series of
notable short-stories which, while marvels of narration, tend to be
condensed novels in plot, novelettes in length, or expanded anecdotes.
However, together with the stories of Prosper Mérimée, they furnish
evidence for a tolerably strong claim that the modern short-story
was developed as a fixed form in France before it was discovered in
America--a claim, however, which lacks the elements of entire solidity,
as a more critical study would show.
From 1830 on, it would require a catalogue to name, and volumes to
discuss, the array of European and American writers who have produced
fictional narratives which have more or less closely approached the
short-story form. Until 1835, when Edgar Allan Poe wrote “Berenice” and
“The Assignation,” the approaches to the present form were sporadic
and unsustained and even unconscious, so far as we may argue from the
absence of any critical standard. After that year both Poe and others
seemed to strive more definitely for the close plot, the repression of
detail, the measurable unity of action, and the singleness of effect
which Poe clearly defined and expounded in 1842.
Since Poe’s notable pronouncement, the place of the short-story as a
distinctive literary form has been attested by the rise and growth of
a body of criticism, in the form of newspaper and magazine articles,
volumes given broadly to the consideration of fiction, and books
devoted entirely to the short-story. Many of these contributions to
the literature of criticism are particularly important because their
authors were the first to announce conclusions regarding the form which
have since been accepted as standard; others have traced with a nice
sense of comparison the origin and development of those earlier forms
of story-telling which marked the more or less definite stages of
progress toward the short-story type as at present recognized; while
still others are valuable as characterizing effectively the stories of
well-known writers and comparing the progress which each showed as the
short-story moved on toward its present high place.
Some detailed mention of these writings, among other critical and
historical productions, may be of value here, without at all attempting
a bibliography, but merely naming chronologically the work of those
critics who have developed one or more phases of the subject with
particular effectiveness.[10]
Interesting and informing as all such historical and comparative
research work certainly is, it must prove to be of greater value to
the student than to the fiction writer. True, the latter may profit by
a profound knowledge of critical distinctions, but he is more likely,
for a time at least, to find his freedom embarrassed by attempting to
adhere too closely to form, whereas in fiction a chief virtue is that
spontaneity which expresses _itself_.
But there would seem to be some safe middle-ground between a flouting
of all canons of art, arising from an utter ignorance and contempt of
the history of any artistic form, and a timid and tied-up unwillingness
to do anything in fiction without first inquiring, “Am I obeying the
laws as set forth by the critics?” The short-story writer should be
no less unhampered because he has learned the origin and traced the
growth of the ancient fiction-forms and learned to say of his own work,
or that of others, “Here is a fictional sketch, here a tale, and here
a short-story”--if, indeed, he does not recognize in it a delightful
hybrid.
By far the most important contribution to the subject of short-story
criticism was made by Edgar Allan Poe, when in May, 1842, he published
in _Graham’s Magazine_ a review of Hawthorne’s _Tales_, in which he
announced his theory of the short-story--a theory which is regarded
to-day as the soundest of any yet laid down.
In 1876, Friedrich Spielhagen pointed out in his _Novelle oder Roman_
the essential distinction between the novel and the short-story.[11]
In 1884, Professor Brander Matthews published in the _Saturday Review_,
London, and in 1885 published in _Lippincott’s Magazine_, “The
Philosophy of the Short-story,” in which, independently of Spielhagen,
he announced the essential distinction between the novel and the
short-story, and pointed out its peculiarly individual characteristics.
In a later book-edition, he added greatly to the original essay by
a series of quotations from other critics and essayists, and many
original comparisons between the writings of master short-story tellers.
In March 11, 1892, T. W. Higginson contributed to _The Independent_
an article on “The Local Short-Story,” which was the first known
discussion of that important type.
In 1895, Sherwin Cody published anonymously in London the first
technical treatise on the rhetoric of the short-story, “The Art of
Story Writing.”
In 1896, Professor E. H. Lewis instituted in Chicago University the
first course of instruction in the art of story-writing.
In 1898, Charles Raymond Barrett published the first large work on
_Short Story Writing_, with a complete analysis of Hawthorne’s “The
Ambitious Guest,” and many important suggestions for writers.
In the same year Charity Dye first applied pedagogical principles to
the study of the short story, in _The Story-Teller’s Art_.
In 1902, Professor Lewis W. Smith published a brochure, _The Writing of
the Short Story_, in which psychological principles were for the first
time applied to the study and the writing of the short-story.
In 1902, Professor H. S. Canby issued _The Short Story_, in which the
theory of impressionism was for the first time developed. In 1903, this
essay was included in _The Book of the Short Story_, Alexander Jessup
collaborating, together with specimens of stories from the earliest
times and lists of tales and short-stories arranged by periods.
In 1904, Professor Charles S. Baldwin developed a criticism of
_American Short Stories_ which has been largely followed by later
writers.
In 1909, Professor H. S. Canby produced _The Short Story in English_,
the first voluminous historical and critical study of the origins,
forms, and content of the short-story.
* * * * *
I have dwelt upon the history of the short-story thus in outline
because we often meet the inquiry--sometimes put ignorantly, sometimes
skeptically--What is a short-story? Is it anything more than a story
that is short?
The passion for naming and classifying all classes of literature
may easily run to extreme, and yet there are some very great values
to be secured by both the reader and the writer in arriving at some
understanding of what literary terms mean. To establish distinctions
among short fictive forms is by no means to assert that types which
differ from the technical short-story are therefore of a lower order
of merit. Many specimens of cognate forms possess an interest which
surpasses that of short-stories typically perfect.
Ever since Poe differentiated the short-story from the mere short
narrative we have come to a clearer apprehension of what this form
really means. I suppose that no one would insist upon the standards
of the short-story as being the criterion of merit for short
fiction--certainly I should commit no such folly in attempting to
establish an understanding, not to say a definition, of the form. More
than that: some short-stories which in one or more points come short of
_technical_ perfection doubtless possess a human interest and a charm
quite lacking in others which are technically perfect--just as may be
the case with pictures.
Some things, however, the little fiction must contain to come
technically within the class of perfect short-stories. It must be
centralized about one predominating incident--which may be supported
by various minor incidents. This incident must intimately concern one
central character--and other supporting characters, it may be. The
story must move with a certain degree of directness--that is, there
must be a thorough exclusion of such detail as is needless. This
central situation or episode or incident constitutes, in its working
out, the plot; for the plot must not only have a crisis growing out of
a tie-up or crossroads or complication, but the very essence of the
plot will consist in the resolution or untying or denouement of the
complication.
Naturally, the word plot will suggest to many a high degree of
complexity; but this is by no means necessary in order to establish the
claims of a fictitious narrative to being a short-story. Indeed, some
of the best short-stories are based upon a very slender complication;
in other words, their plots are not complex.
Elsewhere[12] I have defined the short-story, and this statement
may serve to crystallize the foregoing. “A short-story is a brief,
imaginative narrative, unfolding a single predominating incident and a
single chief character; it contains a plot, the details of which are
so compressed, and the whole treatment so organized, as to produce a
single impression.”
But some of these points need to be amplified.
A short-story is brief not merely from the fact that it contains
comparatively few words, but in that it is so compressed as to omit
non-essential elements. It must be the narration of a single incident,
supported, it may be, by other incidents, but none of these minor
incidents must rival the central incident in the interest of the
reader. A single character must be preëminent, but a pair of characters
coördinate in importance may enjoy this single preëminence in the
story, yet no minor characters must come to overshadow the central
figure. The story will be imaginative, not in the sense that it must
be imaginary, or that the facts in the story may not be real facts,
but they must be handled and organized in an imaginative way, else it
would be plain fact and not fiction. The story must contain a plot;
that is to say, it must exhibit a character or several characters in
crisis--for in plot the important word is crisis--and the denouement is
the resolution of this crisis. Finally, the whole must be so organized
as to leave a unified impression upon the mind of the reader--it must
concentrate and not diffuse attention and interest.
All of the same qualities that inhere in the short-story may also
be found in the novelette, except that the novelette lacks the
compression, unity and simplicity of the short-story and is therefore
really a short novel. Both the novel and the novelette admit of
sub-plots, a large number of minor incidents, and even of digressions,
whereas these are denied to the short-story, which throws a white light
on a single crucial instance of life, some character in its hour of
crisis, some soul at the crossroads of destiny.
There is a tendency nowadays to give a mere outline of a story--so to
condense it, so to make it swift, that the narration amounts to merely
an outline without the flesh and blood of the true short-story. In
other words, there is a tendency to call a scenario of a much longer
story--for instance the outline of a novelette--a short-story. This
extreme is as remote from the well-rounded short-story form as the
leisurely novelette, padded out with infinite attention to detail.
The tale differs from the short-story in that it is merely a succession
of incidents without any real sense of climax other, for example, than
might be given by the close of a man’s life, the ending of a journey,
or the closing of the day. The tale is a chain; the short-story is a
tree. The links of the chain may be extended indefinitely, but there
comes a time when the tree can grow no longer and still remain a
perfect tree. The tale is practically without organization and without
plot--there is little crisis, and the result of the crisis, if any
there be, would be of no vital importance to the characters, for no
special change in their relations to each other grows out of the crisis
in the tale.
A sketch is a lighter, shorter, and more simple form of fiction
than the short-story. It exhibits character in a certain stationary
situation, but has no plot, nor does it disclose anything like a crisis
from which a resolution or denouement is demanded. It might almost be
called a picture in still life were it not that the characters are
likely to live and to move.
In these introductory pages I have emphasized and reëmphasized these
distinctions in various ways, because to me they seem to be important.
But after all they are merely historical and technical. A man may be
a charming fellow and altogether admirable even if his complexion
quarrels with his hair and his hands do not match his feet in relative
size.
* * * * *
The present tendency of the British and American short-story is a
matter of moment because no other literary form commands the interest
of so many writers and readers. All literature is feeling the hand of
commerce, but the short-story is chiefly threatened. The magazine is
its forum, and the magazine must make money or suspend. Hence the chief
inquiry of the editor is, What stories will make my magazine sell? And
this is his attitude because his publisher will no longer pay a salary
to an editor whose magazine must be endowed, having no visible means of
support.
These conditions force new standards to be set up. The story must have
literary merit, it must be true to life, it must deal sincerely with
great principles--up to the limit of popularity. Beyond that it must
not be literary, truthful, or sincere. Popularity first, then the
rest--if possible.
All this is a serious indictment of the average magazine, but it is
true. Only a few magazines regard their fiction as literature and not
as merely so much merchandise, to be cut to suit the length of pages,
furnish situations for pictures, and create subscriptions by readers.
Yet somehow this very commercialized standard is working much good in
spite of itself. It is demanding the best workmanship, and is paying
bright men and women to abandon other pursuits in order to master a
good story-telling method. It is directing the attention of our ablest
literators to a teeming life all about them when otherwise they might
lose themselves in abstractions “up in the air.” It is, for business
reasons, insisting upon that very compression to which Maupassant
attained in the pursuit of art. It is building up a standard of precise
English which has already advanced beyond the best work of seventy
years ago--though it has lost much of its elegance and dignity.
In a word, the commercialized short-story is a mirror of the times--it
compasses movement, often at the expense of fineness, crowds incidents
so rapidly that the skeleton has no space in which to wear its flesh,
and prints stories mediocre and worse because better ones will not be
received with sufficient applause.
But while the journalized short-story adopts the hasty standards of the
newspaper because the public is too busy to be critical, in some other
respects it mirrors the times more happily. The lessons of seriousness
it utters with the lips of fun. Its favorite implement is a rake, but
it does uncover evils that ought not to remain hidden. Finally, it
concerns itself with human things, and tosses speculations aside; it
carefully records our myriad-form local life as the novel cannot; and
it has wonderfully developed in all classes the sense of what is a good
story, and that is a question more fundamental to all literature than
some critics might admit.
* * * * *
Here then is a new-old form abundantly worth study, for its
understanding, its appreciation, and its practise. If there is on one
side a danger that form may become too prominent and spirit too little,
there are balancing forces to hold things to a level. The problems,
projects and sports of the day are, after all, the life of the day, and
as such they furnish rightful themes. Really, signs are not wanting
that point to the truth of this optimistic assertion: The mass of the
people will eventually do the right, and they will at length bring out
of the commercialized short-story a vital literary form too human to be
dull and too artistic to be bad.
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES FOR CLASS OR INDIVIDUAL STUDY OF A
SHORT-STORY
1. Estimating from an average page, how many words has this story?
2. What type of story is it chiefly?
3. Does it subordinately illustrate any other types also? If so, which?
4. Is the title adequate?
5. What is its theme?
6. Write out a brief scenario of the plot.
7. Are the incidents arranged in effective order?
8. How many characters (a) speak, (b) are present but do not speak, (c)
are referred to but are not present?
9. Are the characters idealized, or are they quite true to life?
10. Are the characters individualized? Point out how the author
accomplishes this result.
11. What is the author’s attitude toward his characters?
12. What is the proportion of dialogue to description and comment?
13. What do you think of the dialogue?
14. Do you regard this story as being realistic, romantic, idealistic,
or composite?
15. Is the author’s purpose apparent? If so, what is it?
16. Are there any weak points in the plot?
17. Is the introduction interesting and clear?
18. Does the story end satisfactorily?
19. Is the conclusion either too long or too short?
20. Would any parts of the story be improved either by shortening or by
expanding? Be specific.
21. Does the story arouse in you any particular feeling, or mood?
22. What are the especially strong points of the story?
23. Write a general appreciation, using about two hundred words.
24. What is the final impression the story makes upon you?
NOTE
Nine distinct methods for the study of a novel are outlined in the
appendix to _The Study of a Novel_, by Selden L. Whitcomb. Some of
these may be applied to the short-story. Some excellent study methods
and questions are given in _The Writing of the Short Story_, by Lewis
Worthington Smith.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Excellent and comprehensive works, dealing more especially with the
English novel, are: _The English Novel_, Sidney Lanier (_Scribners_,
1883, 1897); _The Development of the English Novel_, Wilbur L. Cross
(_Macmillan_, 1899); _The Evolution of the English Novel_, Francis
Hovey Stoddard (_Macmillan_, 1900); _A Study of Prose Fiction_, Bliss
Perry (Houghton-Mifflin, 1902); _The Study of A Novel_, Selden L.
Whitcomb (Heath, 1905); _The Technique of the Novel_, Charles F. Horne
(_Harpers_, 1908); _Materials and Methods of Fiction_, Clayton Hamilton
(Baker-Taylor, 1908).
[2] Good collections arranged historically are, _The Book of the Short
Story_, Alexander Jessup and Henry Seidel Canby; and _The Short-story_,
Brander Matthews. The former contains lists of stories short and long
grouped by periods.
[3] A full study of this character has been attempted in the present
author’s _Writing The Short-Story_, Hinds, Hayden and Eldredge. New
York, 1909.
[4] _Egyptian Tales_, W. M. Flinders Petrie.
[5] _Stories from Homer_, Church.
[6] _The Bible as English Literature_, J. H. Gardiner.
[7] _A History of Latin Literature_, George A. Simcox.
[8] The _fabliau_, a French form adopted by the English, is an amusing
story told in verse, generally of eight-syllable line. Another poetic
form of the period is the _lai_, a short metrical romance.
[9] The Italian _novella_ was popular in England down to the late
Elizabethan period. It is a diverting little story of human interest
but told with no moral purpose, even when it is reflective. In purpose
it is the direct opposite of the _exemplum_, which is a moral tale told
to teach a lesson, and may be compared to the “illustration” which the
exhorter repeats in the pulpit to-day.
[10] For a fuller examination of the bibliography of the subject refer
to the bibliographical notes in the books by Matthews, Baldwin, Perry,
Jessup and Canby, Canby, Dye, C. A. Smith, and the editor of this
volume--all referred to in detail elsewhere herein. A supplementary
bibliographical note will also be found on p. 433.
[11] For this important record of the discriminations of a critic
little known in America, we are indebted to Professor C. Alphonso
Smith’s work on _The American Short Story_.
[12] _Writing the Short-Story_, p. 30.
I
STORIES OF ACTION AND ADVENTURE
_Mateo Falcone._--PROSPER MÉRIMÉE.
_A Lodging for the Night._--ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
But the great majority of novels and plays represent human life in
nothing more faithfully than in their insistence upon deeds. It is
through action--tangible, visible action upon the stage, or, in the
novel, action suggested by the medium of words--that the characters
of the play and the novel are ordinarily revealed. In proportion as
high art is attained in either medium of expression this action is
marked by adequacy of motive, by conformity to the character, by
progression and unity.--BLISS PERRY, _A Study of Prose Fiction_.
Studying The Short-Story
STORIES OF ACTION AND ADVENTURE
Few words are needed to set forth the meaning of this caption, for
the designation is sufficiently explicit. One point, however, it will
be well to emphasize: In fiction all action worthy of the name is
the outward manifestation of an inward condition. There is a sense,
therefore, in which all stories that are not mere pictures of internal
states are stories of action; just as it may be said that all stories
are stories of thought, feeling, and resolve. The point of distinction
lies here: in which direction does the story tend?
In one class, outward action is seen to work profoundly upon the
inward life, and the story shows us the workings of this influence in
its final effect upon the inward man and his character. In another,
an inward state is the basis, the premise, the initial force, in the
story, and from that beginning the story goes on to show by a series of
outward movements just how this great inward force operates in and upon
conduct. In a third class, outward and inward action balance.
Now when the outward or visible action, prominently displaying physical
movement, becomes paramount, whether shown as cause or as effect,
we have the action-story, and sometimes the adventure-story. And in
proportion as the interest of the reader centers in what the characters
_do_ instead of in what they _are_, the story departs from the subtler
forms, such as the character-study and the psychological-study, and
action or adventure becomes the type. Reverse these conditions, and
another sort is the result.
Naturally, many variations are possible with these two chief
ingredients ready for use. One story may begin with soul action,
then proceed to show us bodily action with great vividness, and end
by taking us back into the man’s inner life. Another may progress on
contrary lines; and so on, in wide variety. The final test as to what
is the predominating type lies in the appeal to the interest of the
reader: is it based chiefly on what the characters are or on what they
do? Is it the why, or the how, the motive or the happening, that is
most absorbing? The best stories, even the best action and adventure
yarns, are likely to show a fair proportion of both.
MÉRIMÉE AND HIS WRITINGS
Prosper Mérimée was born in Paris, September 28, 1803. His father,
a Norman, was a professor in the _École des Beaux-Arts_, and his
mother, Anne Moreau, who had English blood in her veins, was also an
artist. Prosper attended the _Collège Henri IV_, and in the home of
his parents met the _literati_ of the day. He undertook the study of
law, but soon abandoned it, and spent some years in observing life
while journeying abroad. He made much of ancient and modern languages,
becoming especially proficient in Spanish. Upon his return to Paris
he served in public office, and held the post of Inspector General of
Public Monuments until declining health compelled him to retire. He
was elected to several learned societies and became a commander of the
Legion of Honor, and, in 1844, a member of the French Academy. Nine
years later he was made a Senator of France, an honor he owed to the
friendship of the Empress Eugénie. He died at Cannes on the 23rd of
September, 1870, at the age of sixty-seven.
Prosper Mérimée was a successful poet, translator, novelist, and
short-story writer. His translations of the Russian novelists have been
pronounced excellent. “Colomba” is a romantic novelette of singular
power and charm. His most famous short-stories are “The Taking of the
Redoubt,” “Tamango,” “Federigo,” “The Etruscan Vase,” “The Vision of
Charles XI,” “The Venus of Ille,” “The Pearl of Toledo,” “Carmen” (on
which Bizet’s opera is founded), “Arsène Guillot,” and “Mateo Falcone”;
which follows, in a translation by the editor of this volume. It was
first published in the _Revue de Paris_, May, 1829.
* * * * *
Among French masters of the short-story, Mérimée easily holds place
in the first rank. Both personality and genius are his, and both
well repay careful study. He was an alert student of history,
to whom its anecdotal side made strongest appeal. The detached,
impersonal, unprejudiced attitude of the historian is seen in his
short-stories, for he tells his narrative impartially, with a sort of
take-it-or-leave-it air, allowing the story to make its own appeal
without any special pleading on his part. His story-telling manner is,
therefore, one of ironical coldness. He delighted to tell his tales
in the matter-of-fact manner of the casual traveller who has picked
up a good yarn and passes it on just as it was told him. And this
literary attitude was a reflex of his personality. To him, to love
deeply was to endure pain, to follow impulse was to court trouble, to
cherish enthusiasms was to delude the mind, so he schooled himself to
appear impassive. Yet now and then in his lucid and clear-cut stories,
as in his urbane life, a certain sweetness is revealed which speaks
alluringly of the tender spirit within.
All my life I have sought to free myself from prejudices, to
be a citizen of the world before being a Frenchman, but now
all these garments of philosophy are nothing to me. To-day I
bleed for the wounds of the foolish French, I mourn for their
humiliations, and, however ungrateful and absurd they may be, I
love them still.--PROSPER MÉRIMÉE, _letter to Madame de
Beaulaincourt_ (Marquise de Castellane), written, ten days before
his death, on hearing from his friend Thiers that the disaster of
Sedan was irreparable and that the Empire was a thing of the past.
A gallant man and a gentleman, he has had the reward he would have
wished. He has been discreetly and intimately enjoyed by delicate
tastes.... It was his rare talent to give us those limpid, rapid,
full tales, that one reads in an hour, re-reads in a day, which
fill the memory and occupy the thoughts forever.--ÉMILE FAGUET,
quoted by GRACE KING, in C. D. WARNER’S _Library of the World’s
Best Literature_.
_Colomba_, _Mateo Falcone_, _La Double Méprise_, _La Vénus d’Ille_,
_L’Enlèvement de la Redoute_, _Lokis_, have equals, but no
superiors, either in French prose fiction or in French prose. Grasp
of human character, reserved but masterly description of scenery,
delicate analysis of motive, ability to represent the supernatural,
pathos, grandeur, simple narrative excellence, appear turn by
turn in these wonderful pieces, as they appear hardly anywhere
else.--GEORGE SAINTSBURY, _A Short History of French Literature_.
While inferior to Stendhal as a psychologist, notwithstanding
the keenness of his analysis, he excels him in opening out and
developing action, and in composing a work whose parts hang well
together. In addition he possesses a “literary” style,--not the
style of an algebraist, but that of an exact, self-sustained
writer. He attains the perfection of form in his particular
line. Nearly all his stories are masterpieces of that rather dry
and hard, though forceful, nervous, and pressing style, which
constitutes him one of the most original and most characteristic
novelists of the century.--GEORGES PELLISSIER, _The Literary
Movement in France_.
I do not scruple to apply the word _great_ to Mérimée, a word
which is not to be used lightly, but of which he is thoroughly
deserving. His style is the purest and clearest of our century; no
better model could possibly be found for our present generation.
His prose, to my mind, together with that of Musset, Fromentin,
and Renan, is the most beautiful modern prose which has ever been
written in the French language. Like the great classics of the 17th
century, he never wrote a passage merely to please the eye or the
ear; his sole aim was to express thought, and the colour of his
language, which is so pre-eminently true to nature, is of a rare
sobriety; he never studies effect, and, nevertheless, invariably
attains it.--EDOUARD GRENIER, _Literary Reminiscences_.
FURTHER REFERENCES FOR READING ON MÉRIMÉE
_Miscellaneous Studies_, Walter Pater (1895); _Modern French
Literature_, Benjamin W. Wells (1896); _Contes et Nouvelles, by
Prosper Mérimée_, edited by J. E. Michell (1907); _A Century of French
Fiction_, Benjamin W. Wells (1898); _Prosper Mérimée_, Arthur Symonds,
in _A Century of French Romance_, edited by Edmund W. Gosse (1901);
_Six Masters in Disillusion_, Algar Therold (1909).
MATEO FALCONE
BY PROSPER MÉRIMÉE
_Translation by The Editor_
NOTE: The technical terms used in the marginal notes explanatory of
the short-stories throughout this work follow the terminology used and
treated fully in the present author’s _Writing the Short-Story_.
[Sidenote: A story of local-color because the Corsican customs
determine the destinies of the characters. It is equally a
character-study and a psychological study. Note how characters
harmonize with setting, throughout.]
[Sidenote: Setting is minutely given, yet not diffusely.]