he exclaimed. “Say it be lost, say I am plunged again in poverty, shall
one part of me, and that the worse, continue until the end to override
the better? Evil and good run strong in me, haling me both ways. I
do not love the one thing, I love all. I can conceive great deeds,
renunciations, martyrdoms; and though I be fallen to such a crime as
murder, pity is no stranger to my thoughts. I pity the poor; who knows
their trials better than myself? I pity and help them; I prize love, I
love honest laughter; there is no good thing nor true thing on earth
but I love it from my heart. And are my vices only to direct my life,
and my virtues to lie without effect, like some passive lumber of the
mind? Not so; good, also, is a spring of acts.”
[Sidenote: Here the story is plainly didactic.]
72. But the visitant raised his finger. “For six-and-thirty years that
you have been in this world,” said he, “through many changes of fortune
and varieties of humor, I have watched you steadily fall. Fifteen years
ago you would have started at a theft. Three years back you would
have blenched at the name of murder. Is there any crime, is there any
cruelty or meanness, from which you still recoil?--five years from now
I shall detect you in the fact! Downward, downward, lies your way; nor
can anything but death avail to stop you.”
73. “It is true,” Markheim said, huskily, “I have in some degree
complied with evil. But it is so with all: the very saints, in the mere
exercise of living, grow less dainty, and take on the tone of their
surroundings.”
[Sidenote: Key.]
74. “I will propound to you one simple question,” said the other; “and
as you answer, I shall read to you your moral horoscope. You have grown
in many things more lax; possibly you do right to be so; and at any
account, it is the same with all men. But granting that, are you in any
one particular, however trifling, more difficult to please with your
own conduct, or do you go in all things with a looser rein?”
[Sidenote: MINOR MORAL CLIMAX.]
[Sidenote: Markheim at last sees himself.]
75. “In any one?” repeated Markheim, with an anguish of consideration.
“No,” he added, with despair, “in none! I have gone down in all.”
76. “Then,” said the visitor, “content yourself with what you are, for
you will never change; and the words of your part on this stage are
irrevocably written down.”
77. Markheim stood for a long while silent, and indeed it was the
visitor who first broke the silence. “That being so,” he said, “shall I
show you the money?”
78. “And grace?” cried Markheim.
79. “Have you not tried it?” returned the other. “Two or three years
ago, did I not see you on the platform of revival meetings, and was not
your voice the loudest in the hymn?”
80. “It is true,” said Markheim; “and I see clearly what remains for me
by way of duty. I thank you for these lessons from my soul: my eyes are
opened, and I behold myself at last for what I am.”
81. At this moment, the sharp note of the door-bell rang through the
house; and the visitant, as though this were some concerted signal for
which he had been waiting, changed at once in his demeanor.
[Sidenote: FULL MORAL CRISIS.]
[Sidenote: PHYSICAL RESULTANT CRISIS.]
[Sidenote: Final test.]
82. “The maid!” he cried. “She has returned, as I forewarned you, and
there is now before you one more difficult passage. Her master, you
must say, is ill; you must let her in, with an assured but rather
serious countenance--no smiles, no overacting, and I promise you
success! Once the girl within, and the door closed, the same dexterity
that has already rid you of the dealer will relieve you of this last
danger in your path. Thenceforward you have the whole evening--the
whole night, if needful--to ransack the treasures of the house and to
make good your safety. This is help that comes to you with the mask of
danger. Up!” he cried: “up, friend; your life hangs trembling in the
scales; up, and act!”
83. Markheim steadily regarded his counsellor. “If I be condemned to
evil acts,” he said, “there is still one door of freedom open--I can
cease from action. If my life be an ill thing, I can lay it down.
Though I be, as you say truly, at the beck of every small temptation,
I can yet, by one decisive gesture, place myself beyond the reach of
all. My love of good is damned to barrenness; it may, and let it, be!
But I have still my hatred of evil; and from that, to your galling
disappointment, you shall see that I can draw both energy and courage.”
[Sidenote: Who was the visitant?]
84. The features of the visitor began to undergo a wonderful and lovely
change; they brightened and softened with a tender triumph; and, even
as they brightened, faded and dislimned. But Markheim did not pause to
watch or understand the transformation. He opened the door and went
downstairs very slowly, thinking to himself. His past went soberly
before him; he beheld it as it was, ugly and strenuous like a dream,
random as chance-medley--a scene of defeat. Life, as he thus reviewed
it, tempted him no longer; but on the further side he perceived a quiet
haven for his bark. He paused in the passage, and looked into the
shop, where the candle still burned by the dead body. It was strangely
silent. Thoughts of the dealer swarmed into his mind, as he stood
gazing. And then the bell once more broke out into impatient clamor.
85. He confronted the maid upon the threshold with something like a
smile.
[Sidenote: MORAL CLIMAX. DENOUEMENT.]
86. “You had better go for the police,” said he: “I have killed your
master.”
MORRISON AND HIS WRITINGS
Arthur Morrison was born in Kent, England, in 1863. After some
experience as a clerk in the civil service, as the secretary of a
charity trust in the East End of London, and as a journalist on the
editorial staff of an evening paper, he settled down definitely to his
career as novelist and writer on oriental art. He is best known as a
journalist, however, and his familiarity with the East End has largely
contributed to his success in depicting the sordid life of London’s
“mean streets,” as the “remorseless realism” of his pictures testify.
Mr. Morrison’s literary work was in the nature of prose and verse
panegyrizing bicycles and bicycling. His principal works, apart from
several plays and magazine contributions, are _Tales of Mean Streets_;
the several _Martin Hewitt_ (detective) books; _A Child of the Jago_;
_To London Town_; _The Hole in the Wall_; _The Red Triangle_; _The
Green Eye of Goona_ (published in America as _The Green Diamond_); and
_The Painters of Japan_.
Mr. Morrison’s best fiction is not large in bulk, for his detective
stories are surpassed both in merit and in popular appeal by more than
one writer on similar themes; but in his _Tales of Mean Streets_,
which contains the appended study, “On the Stairs,” he has attained
a compressed power equalled only by the French realists and scarcely
surpassed even by them. He has brought the art of suggestion to a high
pass, his swiftness and firmness of delineation are equally effective,
and though his subjects are sordid and often depressing they live
before us as real folk.
The introduction to _Tales of Mean Streets_ appeared in
_Macmillan’s Magazine_ in October, 1891, where it was called
simply, “A Street.” This sketch attracted the attention of Mr.
W. E. Henley, who gave the young writer the benefit of his own
knowledge and criticism; and it is to Henley and to Walter Besant
that Mr. Morrison makes special acknowledgment for help in the
technicalities and mechanism of his tales. Most of these _Tales of
Mean Streets_ appeared in the _National Observer_ (while Henley was
the editor), and a few in the _Pall Mall Budget_.--_Book Buyer_
(London), vol. 12.
If the modern novel about the slums, such as novels of Mr. Arthur
Morrison, or the exceedingly able novels of Mr. Somerset Maugham,
are intended to be sensational, I can only say that that is a noble
and reasonable object, and that they attain it.... It may be ...
it is necessary to have in our fiction the image of the horrible
and hairy East-ender, merely to keep alive in us a fearful and
childlike wonder at external peculiarities.... To summarize, our
slum fiction is quite defensible as æsthetic fiction; it is not
defensible as spiritual fact.--GILBERT K. CHESTERTON, _Heretics_.
Ever seeking the clean-cut, picturesque phrase and the vivid
word, he produced a very striking picture of the East End. But,
nevertheless, it was not quite satisfactory and convincing. Human
nature does not alter so much with conditions as he seems to
think. A little less or a little more morality does not affect its
elements.... Mr. Morrison’s strongest gift in writing is a cynicism
that is almost brutal. With it he elaborates the features of all
his characters till the impression is produced that one savage,
hideous, ugly coster and one gaudy-feathered, bedizened “Jonah”
have acted as models for all his studies of Jagodom. Moreover, his
success has been achieved in pictures of the brutal.--_Academy_
(London), vol. 52.
The “mean streets” are streets in London.... [They] have found in
Arthur Morrison an interpreter who lifts them out of their meanness
upon the plane of a just claim to human sympathy. He lets us see
the relief. Bill Napper, the drunken kerb-whacker, come into
property and defending it against the rascally labor agitator,
Scuddy Lond, mixing religious fervor and till-tapping with entire
sincerity, Simmons and Ford, victims of their joint wife’s “jore”
and mania for trouser-making, even the Anarchists of the Red Cow
group, appeal to us with a sense almost of kinship because we feel
that the figures are real. They are capital character-studies
besides. Dickens never made a finer than the thief Scuddy Lond, or
than Billy Chope.... The art of these stories seems flawless. Mr.
Morrison’s gift amounts to genius.--JACOB RIIS, _Romances of “The
Other Half,” The Book Buyer_, vol. 12.
FURTHER REFERENCES FOR READING ON MORRISON
_Methods of Arthur Morrison_, _Academy_, vol. 50, 531; _His Work,
Academy_, vol. 52, 493; _Blackwood’s Magazine_, vol. 163, 734; _How to
Write a Short Story, Bookman_, vol. 5, 45; _Morrison as a Realist_,
H. D. Traill, _Fortnightly_, vol. 67, 65; _Reply_, A. Morrison, _New
Review_, vol. 16, 326; _Child of the Jago: True to Facts_, A. O. Jay,
_Fortnightly_, vol. 67, 324.
FOR ANALYSIS
ON THE STAIRS
BY ARTHUR MORRISON
The house had been “genteel.” When trade was prospering in the East
End, and the ship-fitter or block-maker thought it no shame to live in
the parish where his workshop lay, such a master had lived here. Now,
it was a tall, solid, well-bricked, ugly house, grimy and paintless in
the joinery, cracked and patched in the windows: where the front door
stood open all day long; and the womankind sat on the steps, talking
of sickness and deaths and the cost of things; and treacherous holes
lurked in the carpet of road-soil on the stairs and in the passage. For
when eight families live in a house, nobody buys a door-mat, and the
street was one of those streets that are always muddy. It smelt, too,
of many things, none of them pleasant (one was fried fish); but for all
that it was not a slum.
2. Three flights up, a gaunt woman with bare forearms stayed on her way
to listen at a door which, opening, let out a warm, fetid waft from a
close sick-room. A bent and tottering old woman stood on the threshold,
holding the door behind her.
3. “An’ is 'e no better now, Mrs. Curtis?” the gaunt woman asked, with
a nod at the opening.
4. The old woman shook her head, and pulled the door closer. Her jaw
waggled loosely in her withered chaps: “Nor won’t be; till 'e’s gone.”
Then after a certain pause, “'E’s goin’,” she said.
5. “Don’t doctor give no 'ope?”
6. “Lor’ bless ye, I don’t want to ast no doctors,” Mrs. Curtis
replied, with something not unlike a chuckle. “I’ve seed too many on
’em. The boy’s a-goin’, fast; I can see that. An’ then”--she gave the
handle another tug, and whispered--“he’s been called.” She nodded
amain; “Three seprit knocks at the bed-head las’ night; an’ I know what
_that_ means!”
7. The gaunt woman raised her brows, and nodded. “Ah, well,” she said,
“we all on us comes to it some day, sooner or later. An’ it’s often a
'appy release.”
8. The two looked into space beyond each other, the elder with a nod
and a croak. Presently the other pursued, “'E’s been a very good son,
ain’t 'e?”
9. “Ay, ay, well enough son to me,” responded the old woman, a
little peevishly; “an’ I’ll 'ave ’im put away decent, though there’s
on’y the Union for me after. I can do that, thank Gawd!” she added,
meditatively, as chin on fist she stared into the thickening dark over
the stairs.
10. “When I lost my pore 'usband,” said the gaunt woman with a certain
brightening, “I give ’im a 'ansome funeral. 'E was a Oddfeller, an’ I
got twelve pound. I 'ad a oak caufin an’ a open 'earse. There was a
kerridge for the fam’ly an’ one for 'is mates--two 'orses each, an’
feathers, an’ mutes; an’ it went the furthest way round to the cimitry.
'Wotever 'appens, Mrs. Manders,’ says the undertaker, ‘you’ll feel
as you’ve treated 'im proper; nobody can’t reproach you over that.’
An’ they couldn’t. 'E was a good 'usband to me, an’ I buried ’im
respectable.”
11. The gaunt woman exulted. The old, old story of Manders’s funeral
fell upon the other one’s ears with a freshened interest, and she
mumbled her gums ruminantly. “Bob’ll 'ave a 'ansome buryin', too,” she
said. “I can make it up, with the insurance money, an’ this, an’ that.
On’y I dunno about mutes. It’s a expense.”
12. In the East End, when a woman has not enough money to buy a thing
much desired, she does not say so in plain words; she says the thing
is an “expense,” or a “great expense.” It means the same thing, but
it sounds better. Mrs. Curtis had reckoned her resources, and found
that mutes would be an “expense.” At a cheap funeral mutes cost
half-a-sovereign and their liquor. Mrs. Manders said as much.
13. “Yus, yus, 'arf-a-sovereign,” the old woman assented. Within, the
sick feebly beat the floor with a stick. “I’m a-comin’,” she cried
shrilly; “yus, 'arf-a-sovereign, but it’s a lot, an’ I don’t see 'ow
I’m to do it--not at present.” She reached for the door-handle again,
but stopped and added, by after-thought, “Unless I don’t 'ave no
plooms.”
14. “It 'ud be a pity not to 'ave plooms. I 'ad--”
15. There were footsteps on the stairs: then a stumble and a testy
word. Mrs. Curtis peered over into the gathering dark. “Is it the
doctor, sir?” she asked. It was the doctor’s assistant; and Mrs.
Manders tramped up to the next landing as the door of the sick-room
took him in.
16. For five minutes the stairs were darker than ever. Then the
assistant, a very young man, came out again, followed by the old woman
with a candle. Mrs. Manders listened in the upper dark. “He’s sinking
fast,” said the assistant. “He _must_ have a stimulant. Dr. Mansell
ordered port wine. Where is it?” Mrs. Curtis mumbled dolorously. “I
tell you he _must_ have it,” he averred with unprofessional emphasis
(his qualification was only a month old). “The man can’t take solid
food, and his strength must be kept up somehow. Another day may make
all the difference. Is it because you can’t afford it?” “It’s a
expense--sich a expense, doctor,” the old woman pleaded. “An’ wot with
'arf-pints o’ milk an’--” She grew inarticulate, and mumbled dismally.
17. “But he must have it, Mrs. Curtis, if it’s your last shilling:
it’s the only way. If you mean you absolutely haven’t the money--” and
he paused a little awkwardly. He was not a wealthy young man--wealthy
young men do not devil for East End doctors--but he was conscious
of a certain haul of sixpences at nap the night before; and, being
inexperienced, he did not foresee the career of persecution whereon he
was entering at his own expense and of his own motion. He produced five
shillings: “If you absolutely haven’t the money, why--take this and get
a bottle--good: not at a public-house. But mind, _at once_. He should
have had it before.”
18. It would have interested him, as a matter of coincidence, to know
that his principal had been guilty of the selfsame indiscretion--even
the amount was identical--on that landing the day before. But, as Mrs.
Curtis said nothing of this, he floundered down the stair and out
into the wetter mud, pondering whether or not the beloved son of a
Congregational minister might take full credit for a deed of charity on
the proceeds of sixpenny nap. But Mrs. Curtis puffed her wrinkles, and
shook her head sagaciously as she carried in her candle. From the room
came a clink as of money falling into a teapot. And Mrs. Manders went
about her business.
19. The door was shut, and the stair a pit of blackness. Twice a lodger
passed down, and up and down, and still it did not open. Men and women
walked on the lower flights, and out at the door, and in again. From
the street a shout or a snatch of laughter floated up the pit. On the
pavement footsteps rang crisper and fewer, and from the bottom passage
there were sounds of stagger and sprawl. A demented old clock buzzed
divers hours at random, and was rebuked every twenty minutes by the
regular tread of a policeman on his beat. Finally, somebody shut the
street-door with a great bang, and the street was muffled. A key turned
inside the door on the landing, but that was all. A feeble light shone
for hours along the crack below, and then went out. The crazy old clock
went buzzing on, but nothing left that room all night. Nothing that
opened the door....
20. When next the key turned, it was to Mrs. Manders’s knock, in the
full morning; and soon the two women came out on the landing together,
Mrs. Curtis with a shapeless clump of bonnet. “Ah, 'e’s a lovely
corpse,” said Mrs. Manders. “Like wax. So was my 'usband.”
21. “I must be stirrin’,” croaked the old woman, “an’ go about the
insurance an’ the measurin’ an’ that. There’s lots to do.”
22. “Ah, there is. 'Oo are you goin’ to 'ave,--Wilkins? I 'ad Wilkins.
Better than Kedge, _I_ think: Kedge’s mutes dresses rusty, an’ their
trousis is frayed. If you was thinkin’ of 'avin’ mutes--”
23. “Yus, yus,”--with a palsied nodding,--“I’m a-goin’ to 'ave mutes: I
can do it respectable, thank Gawd!”
24. “And the plooms?”
25. “Ay, yus, and the plooms too. They ain’t sich a great expense,
after all.”
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS FOR STUDY
1. What are the points of similarity between the Character-Study and
the Psychological Study?
2. Define (a) Psychology, (b) Realism.
3. Does Markheim’s change of heart seem to you to be genuine? Give your
reasons.
4. Analyze his motives fully.
5. Is the supernatural element convincing?
6. Could conscience produce the same effect as the Visitant?
7. What impression did Stevenson seek to convey by “Markheim”?
8. Fully analyze the thoughts, feelings, and motives of the mother.
9. Can you detect Morrison’s motive in writing “On the Stairs”?
10. Fully analyze one other psychological study, from any source.
TEN REPRESENTATIVE PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES
“A Coward,” Guy de Maupassant, translated in _The Odd Number_.
“Another Gambler,” Paul Bourget, translated in _Stories by Foreign
Authors_.
“La Bretonne,” André Theuriet, translated in _Short-Story
Masterpieces_.
“The Song of Death,” Hermann Sudermann, translated in _The Indian
Lily_.
“The Recovery,” Edith Wharton, in _Crucial Instances_.
“Billy-Boy,” John Luther Long, in volume of same title.
“The Executioner,” Honoré de Balzac, translated in _Masterpieces of
Fiction_.
“The Revolt of ‘Mother,’” Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, _Harper’s
Magazine_, vol. 81, 553.
“The Lady or the Tiger,” Frank R. Stockton, in volume of same title.
“The Man Without a Country,” Edward Everett Hale, in _Short Story
Classics, American_.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
An extended list of books and magazine articles on the short-story
will be found on pages 375-378, 426-431 of the present author’s
_Writing the Short-Story_, New York, Hinds, Hayden and Eldredge
(1909), xiv+441 pp. Most of the bibliographical references here
appended also appear in the revised edition of _Writing the
Short-Story_ (1918). Magazine articles have not been included, as
they may be found listed in the cumulative periodical indexes.
For several years, _The Writer’s Monthly_, Springfield, Mass., a
periodical for literary workers, has printed monthly a list of
magazine articles of interest to writers.
_Notes on the Influence of E. T. A. Hoffman on Edgar Allan Poe_, G.
Gruener, Modern Language Association of America (1904).
_How to Write_, Charles Sears Baldwin. Macmillan (1906). Chapters
on “How to Tell a Story,” and “How to Describe.” Based upon Bible
narratives.
_The Art of the Short-Story_, George W. Gerwig. Werner (1909). A
brief general study. Out of print.
_The Short Story in English_, Henry Seidel Canby. Holt (1909). An
exhaustive examination into the origin and development of the form.
_A History of Story Telling_, Arthur Ransome. Stokes (1909).
_Studies in Several Literatures_, Harry Thurston Peck. Dodd, Mead
(1909). Chapters on “Poe,” and “The Detective Story.”
_The Art of Writing_ (also issued under the title, _The Art of
Short Story Writing_), George Randolph Chester. The Publishers
Syndicate (1910). A collection of brief notes on all phases of the
title-subject.
_The Fiction Factory_, John Milton Edwards (pseudonym). Editor Co.
(1911). “The author tells how he conceived, planned, wrote and sold
$100,000 worth of manuscripts.”
_The Craftsmanship of Writing_, Frederic Taber Cooper. Dodd, Mead
(1912). These papers appeared serially in _The Bookman_, New York.
_The Plot of the Short Story_, Henry Albert Phillips.
Stanhope-Dodge (1912). The technique and mechanics of plot.
_The American Short Story_, C. Alphonso Smith. Ginn (1912). An
American reprint of one of the author’s lectures delivered as
Roosevelt Professor at the University of Berlin.
_The Art and Business of Story Writing_, W. B. Pitkin. Macmillan
(1912).
_The American Short Story_, Elias Lieberman. Editor Co. (1912).
_The Art of Story Writing_, J. Berg Esenwein and Mary Davoren
Chambers. Home Correspondence School (1913). A study of the shorter
fictional forms--the anecdote, fable, parable, tale, sketch, and
short-story--with outlines for study and instruction.
_The Technique of the Mystery Story_, Carolyn Wells. Home
Correspondence School (1913).
_Art in Short Story Narration_, Henry Albert Phillips.
Stanhope-Dodge (1913).
_The Art of Writing_, Preface to “The Nigger of the Narcissus,”
Joseph Conrad. Doubleday (1914).
_Short Stories in the Making_, Robert Wilson Neal. Oxford
University Press (1914).
_The Author’s Craft_, Arnold Bennett. Doran (1914)
_The Art of the Short Story_, Carol Grabo. Scribner (1914).
_The Modern Short-Story_, Lilian Notestein and Waldo H. Dunn.
Barnes (1914).
_On the Art of Writing_, A. Quiller-Couch. Putnam (1916).
_The Contemporary Short Story_, Harry T. Baker. Heath (1916).
_The Short-Story_, Barry Pain. Doran (1916). Reprint of an earlier
English edition.
_The Thirty Six Dramatic Situations_, Georges Polti. Editor Co.
(1916).
_A Handbook of Story Writing_, Blanche Colton Williams. Dodd, Mead
(1917).
_Children’s Stories and How to Tell Them_, J. Berg Esenwein and
Marietta Stockard. Home Correspondence School (1917).
_Helps for Student-Writers_, Willard E. Hawkins. The Student-Writer
Press (1917).
_The Technique of Fiction Writing_, Robert Saunders Dowst. Editor
Co. (1917).
Besides the edited collections of miscellaneous short-stories
included in the first edition of _Writing the Short-Story_, which
need not be reproduced here, are the following. In most instances
the collections are prefaced by introductory notes by the editors
named.
_The Best American Tales_, W. P. Trent and John Bell Henneman.
Crowell (1907).
_International Library of Fiction_ (3 vols.), William Patten.
Collier (1910).
_The Great English Short-Story Writers_ (2 vols.), William J. and
Coningsby W. Dawson. Harper (1910).
_The Lock and Key Library_ (10 vols.), Julian Hawthorne. This is
an expansion of the six-volume edition of _Mystery and Detective
Stories_ (6 vols.). Review of Reviews Co. (1912).
_Short-Story Masterpieces, French_ (2 vols.), J. Berg Esenwein.
Home Correspondence School (1912).
_Short-Story Masterpieces, Russian_ (2 vols.), J. Berg Esenwein.
Home Correspondence School (1913).
_A Collection of Short Stories_, L. A. Pittenger. Macmillan (1913).
_A Study of the Short Story_, Henry S. Canby. Holt (1913).
_A Book of Short Stories_, Stuart P. Sherman. Holt (1914).
_Types of the Short-Story_, Benjamin A. Heydrick. Scott, Foresman
(1914).
_The Short-Story_, E. A. Cross. McClurg (1914).
_Modern Short Stories_, Margaret Ashmun. Macmillan (1914).