Of the many subjects open to the novelist none is more fertile in
interests than the international theme, and none more arresting in
appeal. Clash of character being the starting point of drama we have
it amplified in the international by both sympathy and dissonance.
Mutual attraction between individuals will sometimes overleap racial
differences in point of view; and yet racial differences in point of
view will always be at war with mutual attraction between individuals.
All contrasts, all complexities, are focussed on this single stage,
while one gets as nowhere else the conflict which each new-born
generation cannot but wage against the dictation of the ages. On this
crowded scene bring in that American element to which the dictation of
the ages means relatively nothing and the wealth of the dramatic field
becomes obvious.
It is curious, therefore, that it has been so little touched. It has
been entered, but not very far. The great Russian and French
novelists, with their concentration on the life immediately round
them, in the main ignore it. The English have worked it a little, but
not often, and not with much insight. The truth seems to be that the
European nations, with their strong lines of cleavage, have difficulty
in understanding each other, while they understand America not at all.
Steeped and dyed in their own national prepossessions they regard
other national prepossessions with indifference, amazement, or
hostility. There are exceptions to this statement, of course. I speak
only of general tendencies. The trend of events since the war even
more than the war itself brings home to us the fact that the European
mind is tribal.
The American mind is more open, as it is natural that it should be. It
has its national prepossessions; but it has them less exclusively.
Moreover, it is endowed to an unusual degree with the impulse of
curiosity. It likes to see, to know, to explore. Beyond any other type
of mind it regards a foreigner as a man and a brother, and not as a
foe. To the American a foreigner’s life, habits, prejudices, and
outlooks are of interest. He often likes them. He generally finds them
picturesque. He may think them foolish, but he never thinks them dull.
Being so busily occupied in creating a life for himself he enjoys
inspecting the lives other men have created for themselves, just as a
man who is building a house will examine with care the experiments of
a neighbor doing the same thing.
The international attracts the American, and yet even the American has
no broad international strain in his literature. The theme crops out
occasionally, but is never constant. Two or three writers have made it
specially their own, but they have founded no line. When we have
mentioned Hawthorne in one notable book, Henry James and Marion
Crawford in not a few from each, we have almost exhausted the list of
the great names of the past, while of the present there is practically
no one to quote.
The explanation, if we wanted one, might be found in lack of
authority. Though many writers travel in foreign countries few live in
them with sufficient intimacy to see below the surface. Against
outsiders continental European private life is guarded like a shrine.
The Latin countries in particular know little of the easy throwing
open of the home instinctive to the Anglo-Saxon, so that, as a rule, a
stranger steps within the seclusion of a French or Italian family only
by marriage or some unusual set of conditions.
And yet both marriage and the unusual set of conditions occur.
In the case of the former we who remain in America are not greatly
benefited, since few of the American women who marry into continental
Europe ever tell what they know for the information of compatriots.
The power of absorption of a highly organized social life, like that
of Italy, France, or Spain, is such that not many who enter it ever
come out of it again. They are held by a thousand social and domestic
tentacles, which have no counterpart in happy-go-lucky American
relationships. Amid their surroundings they may always remain alien,
and yet they are enclosed by them, as insects in amber.
It is to the unusual set of conditions that we owe most, and the
author of the novel of which these words are meant to be a prelude has
enjoyed those conditions to an exceptional degree. Diplomatic life has
the special advantage that it establishes close relations as a matter
of course. It admits one to the palace of which the chance traveller
sees only the windows and walls. It knows no slow approaches or
apprenticeships. Not only are the barred doors thrown open, but to the
most sealed society the foreigner in diplomacy is given the key.
Of this _entrée_ not merely to foreign houses and hearths but to
foreign points of view Mrs. Anderson has been always quick to perceive
the potentialities. Revealed by her other books as gifted with a power
of observation at once delicate and shrewd, she has shown a remarkable
faculty for reaching the significance of things beyond the objective
and the ceremonious. She knows the value of European stateliness as
set over against our American slap-dash; and she can also throw into
relief the human spontaneous qualities in our American slap-dash in
contrast to the calculated efforts of European stateliness. In her
game she plays the New World against the Old, and the Old World
against the New, in the spirit of comedy, not without its tragic
points. She uses her hemispheres like cymbals, for resonance and
clash, for emotion and conflict, and also for joy, for wonder, for
laughter, and for the leaping of the heart.