"Two Years in the Jungle. The Experiences of a Hunter and
Naturalist in India, Ceylon, the Malay Peninsula, and Borneo." By
William T. Hornaday. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
The author of this book, who is now chief taxidermist of the National
Museum, was sent out in 1876 to the countries enumerated on the
title-page as collector for Professor Ward's "Natural Science
Establishment" at Rochester. His skill and deftness in preparing skins
and skeletons for mounting were, as we are led to suppose, what
specially qualified him for this mission; but if he had not possessed,
in addition, many characteristics less common, perhaps, but more
generally attractive, he could hardly have executed it with the same
facility and completeness, still less have found in it matter for this
thoroughly entertaining narrative. His ardor as a sportsman and a
naturalist seems to have sprung from a stronger, independent love of
"wild life," an instinctive preference for the haunts and habits of
uncivilized races, apart from the pursuits for which they give scope.
This may be thought to argue ignoble tastes; but the reverse conclusion
would be more correct. Mr. Hornaday is a believer in the "gentle
savage." The Dyak seems to him "the model man," not on account of his
defects, which are few, but of his virtues, which are many. He is manly,
truthful, honest, chaste, and even when drunk--which happens only on
rare festive occasions and is a result of his intercourse with "the
rascally Chinaman"--is perfectly decorous, and, as our author was
assured, would never "dream of violating the laws of decency and good
temper." For the Hindu, on the other hand, as an entirely conventional
and artificial creature, obsequious, hypocritical, inhospitable,
disdainful of the race on whom he fawns and before whom he trembles as
"unclean," Mr. Hornaday has no other feeling than aversion and contempt.
He gives an amusing account of his indignation on finding that a vessel
from which he had drunk was regarded by a "ghee-seller" as "defiled." "I
was strongly tempted," he writes, "to knock his ghee-pots about his
ears, take thirty rupees' worth of satisfaction out of his royal
highness, and then go up to court and pay my fine." It will be seen that
Mr. Hornaday is a true-born American, and not disposed to stand any
nonsense that conflicts with the great law of human equality. But though
this trait makes him appear somewhat uncharitable toward prejudices that
have survived the Declaration of Independence, it shows itself in its
most amiable light in his own free and sociable disposition, his
readiness to be on terms of good-fellowship with men of all sorts and
conditions, and his heartiness in responding to any show of friendship
in act or demeanor. Hence, on one occasion, even a Hindu, a
fellow-traveller in a railway-carriage, roused his kindliest sentiments
by offering him a handful of cooked "dal" after plastering it over a
little pile of "chapatties." "I was completely taken aback for an
instant, for the old gentleman's hands were as grimy as my own; but I
accepted the food with my politest bow and ate it down with every
appearance of gratitude. I would have eaten it had it been ten times as
dirty as it undoubtedly was. It was an act as friendly as any man could
perform, and I was pleased to find such a feeling of pure charity and
benevolence in a native." Nor does his nationality prevent him from
doing justice to the English character as it came under his observation
in the East. He recognizes the benevolence of the English rule in India,
and considers Sarawak under Rajah Brooke "the model of a good
government." With individual Englishmen--who, he considers, are seen to
the best advantage out of their own country--he found no difficulty in
forming the most cordial relations. We have no doubt that his own
qualities, his good humor, frankness, intelligence, and vivacity,
coupled with his enthusiasm for pursuits in which almost all Englishmen
take a strong interest, rendered him a very attractive and agreeable
companion, and caused the "Britishers" with whom he came in contact to
set him down at once for what he evidently is, an uncommonly good
specimen of the Yankee.
Mr. Hornaday has the good sense to spare us the tedium of reading any
fresh descriptions of regions and places sufficiently well known or only
casually visited in the course of his travels. The few and slight
exceptions prove, indeed, that he would hardly be a safe guide when off
his own ground. His criticism of the Taj Mahal, than which "no other
structure in the world has been so greatly overpraised," may be accepted
as an instance of an independent impression and an offset to the
extravagance of some of its admirers, but will scarcely testify to his
competency to pass judgment on works of art in the tone of a recognized
authority. Nor does his notion that Cairo was the capital of ancient
Egypt, that "we may take pleasure in thinking that the city is to-day
very like what it was when the Pyramids were new," (!) and "believe that
these are the same cramped and crooked streets, the same latticed
windows and overhanging upper stories, the same bazaars and workshops
and wells, that were here when the brethren of Joseph came down, as
envoys extraordinary, to practise the arts of diplomacy in the court of
Pharaoh," suggest any profound acquaintance with the history of the
country and the mutations it has undergone. But it would be very unfair
to dwell on such points as these. In general, as has been intimated, Mr.
Hornaday sticks to his last with a rare and commendable closeness. The
sights which he finds most attractive in famous seaports are the
fish-markets and the natural-history museums. The themes on which he
loves to dilate are the habits of the crocodile, the elephant, and the
orang-utan, the modes of hunting and killing them, and, above all, the
process of skinning and dissecting them. But he does not delight in
slaughter for the sake of sport, nor regard the forest or the river as
simply the habitat of uncouth monsters, nor make the account of his
journeys the record of a mere business enterprise. He has a keen love of
adventure, a strong sense of the humorous aspect of his experiences, and
an inexhaustible flow of spirits. He writes in an animated but
unpretentious style, and without any attempt at elaborate description
contrives to leave clear impressions of his achievements and
surroundings. His ardor and good spirits are infectious, and the reader
is as little wearied as he himself appears to have been by his long and
devious tramps over the hills, through the swamps, and amid the tangled
undergrowth of the jungle.
Books on Artists.
"Life and Reminiscences of Gustave Dore". Compiled from Material
supplied by Dore's Relations and Friends and from Personal
Recollection. With many Original Unpublished Sketches and
Selections from Dore's best Published Illustrations. By Blanche
Roosevelt. New York: Cassell & Co.
"Eugene Delacroix, par lui-meme." Paris: J. Ronam.
"J. F. Millet." Par Charles Yriarte. "Hans Holbein." Par Jean
Rousseau. (Bibliotheque d'Art Moderne.) Paris: Jules Ronam.
Mrs. Roosevelt's volume is an engaging jumble of fact and fancy, a
medley of impressions, hasty generalizations, souvenirs, reminiscences,
all jotted down apparently in such breathless haste that we can only
wonder that the result is a coherent and tolerably serious study of
Gustave Dore, his life and his works. The author's methods are, indeed,
those of the great designer himself, who obtained brilliant results
regardless of careful processes. A genuine biography of Dore is yet to
be written; but here we have a rather fascinating book of five hundred
pages, full of personal and intimate narrations by the artist's family
and friends, profuse, _naif_, tender, overflowing with French sentiment
and an intense sympathy and _camaraderie_. Interspersed with this
biographical matter are innumerable pen-and-ink sketches, caricatures,
designs, and finished pictures, illustrating the natural evolution of
Dore's marvellous talent, the first instances of which show what he
could do at the age of five. In fact, long before he could read the
child showed clear signs of possessing a distinctively artistic
organization. His practice with pen and pencil was pursued, however,
without any sympathy or encouragement from his family, and his father,
at least, was strongly averse to his taking up the career of an artist.
In 1847, when Gustave was in his fifteenth year, his parents, who
resided at Strasbourg, took him for a fortnight to Paris. The delights
of the capital made a strong impression on the mind of the stripling,
and he ardently wished to remain there. The thought occurred to him of
offering some of his work to publishers, and, dashing off a few
caricatures, he took advantage of the momentary absence of his parents
to show them to Philipon, who had just founded his "Journal pour Rire."
The result was that the publisher instantly engaged Gustave as one of
the regular artists for his paper, and the boy remained in Paris,
supporting himself and paying for his tuition at the Lycee Charlemagne,
where he had Taine and About for fellow-collegians. This early success,
combined with the most untiring industry and steady, almost passionate,
devotion to his work, is one of the most remarkable biographical facts
on record. A year later the elder Dore died, and his widow came to Paris
to reside with her two sons, the chief expenses of the _menage_ being
supported by Gustave, then little more than sixteen years of age.
Between the years 1850 and 1870 he is said to have made by his pencil
seven millions of francs,--almost a million and a half of dollars.
Besides this enormous activity, a supreme and jealous ambition induced
him to undertake not only every piece of work offered, from
Bible-illustrations to a comic almanac, but whatever his brain or his
fancy could conceive as possible for artist to achieve. Inspiration
seized him at each new idea, bold and striking images, fantastic
fancies, all the splendors of a magnificent or grotesque ideal. His work
was a delirium; in a single morning he has been known to throw off
twenty blocks which brought him ten thousand francs. He was, however,
perpetually discontented, disgusted with his vocation, and envious of
successful painters. He had almost a convulsion one day on hearing that
Meissonier had received two hundred thousand francs for a single
painting. "What!" he exclaimed; "a thing like that? Now, look at me. I
can paint; I know I could paint better than Meissonier, at any rate.
Have I ever been paid two hundred thousand francs for anything? No; and
I never shall be. The fact is that no one understands me. I shall live
and die misunderstood, or never comprehended at all,--which is worse."
Fired by emulation, he shut himself up to create masterpieces which
should surpass Meissonier and paralyze the world; and in a short time he
showed his friend Lacroix twelve colossal canvases on which he had
painted revolting realistic pictures which he called the "Abominations
of Paris." "What do you think of Meissonier now?" he asked.
He longed ardently to be a painter, and was never at peace with critical
Paris while it refused him the name of painter and called him only a
designer. London was dearer to his heart from the fact that there were
enshrined in the Dore Gallery and made one of the sights of the town his
stupendous canvases imaging forth his conceptions of Scripture subjects.
What he might have done as a painter had he studied at any early age
under good masters must be left to conjecture, although his paintings
carry with them a clear confession that naturally he did not possess a
good eye for color. He was always impatient of criticism which made him
feel that there was any lack of _technique_ in his works. "He has it all
in him, but lacks 'school,'" was the verdict of the critics.
Undoubtedly, wishing to do all that man has done, Dore would have liked
to focus his powers on marvels of refinement and exactness, like
Meissonier's; but he was proud of his distinctive characteristics, and
wanted the least block he touched to show something Doreish.
"Now you will give us some Velasquezes," a lady said to him during his
journey in Spain.
"No, madame," he replied; "I shall give you some more 'Dores.'"
What he enjoyed was an audacious and gigantic experiment, a subject
which allowed him free and bold handling and a mystic, half-grotesque
attitude toward what he found in it of poetry or strength. The feverish
and hurried character of his work is sadly evident in many of his most
ambitious designs. His illustrations of Milton, Dante, and the Wandering
Jew may be said to show his powers at their best,--and perhaps we ought
to include his Bible-pictures. Too often he uses without apparent motive
feeble allegory and fantasy; and many of his later works must be
considered by his most charitable critics not only obscure, but almost
insane.
To turn from Dore to Delacroix is to take up the very different career
of one of those "immortals" among whose works the great designer was
eager to see his own unlucky paintings enrolled. Opposite as these two
artists were, they had nevertheless certain things in common: their work
was their life,--all personal gratification was subordinated to
art,--each denied himself marriage, and yet enjoyed the untiring
devotion of some sort of womankind. Dore had both his mother and his
nurse to humor and spoil him. Delacroix endured the affectionate tyranny
of his housekeeper, who watched over him as a lioness over her young.
Delacroix, who was frail, sensitive, feverishly carried away by his
work, needed just the careful intervention which this woman imposed to
save him from the depressing influences of every-day life. She kept all
uncongenial visitors from him. He was fastidious to a degree,--could not
use a spoiled palette, and Jenny learned to prepare his palette, colors,
and brushes with the nicest care. Delacroix began with a masterpiece. He
was only twenty-three when he produced his "Dante and Virgil," which put
him at the head of the so-called "romantic school." His clear intellect,
his strength as a draughtsman, his abundance of invention, his wonderful
color, made themselves felt at once. He had a long career in which to
develop, and he was tireless in reinforcing his own great powers by
profound and careful study of great authors, besides working
perpetually to discover the secrets of the splendid paintings of
Raphael, Velasquez, Veronese, and, above all, Rubens. It was his habit
to spend whole days at the Jardin des Plantes, watching the animals,
observing their postures and movements, aiming to pluck the heart out of
the mystery of each organization. In 1828 he went to England, and,
although he disliked the country, its architecture, the ill-made shoes
and soiled stockings of the women, he carried back with him powerful
impressions from Constable and from Kean's impersonations of Shakespeare
which animated all his later work. His picture of "Hamlet," although it
was not completed until 1843, owes its conception to this period. His
lithographs of "Faust" elicited from Goethe the remark, "He has
surpassed the pictures I had made for myself of the scenes written by
myself."
The carefully-prepared monographs on Millet and Holbein, accompanied by
excellent designs after their works, are full of suggestive criticism,
and show how well the modern practice of popularizing art is carried on
in Paris. Millet was born some sixteen years after Delacroix, and came
to Paris in 1837, when that great master had produced some of his best
pictures, which of all contemporary art were what aroused Millet's
admiration and homage. "_Grands par les gestes_," he called them,
"_grands par l'invention et la richesse du coloris_." Millet himself,
however, was to found a separate school from that of the brilliant
Delacroix. The fac-similes in this brochure from his original designs in
crayon or pastel give much of the sentiment and meaning of his work. As
the author says, they might well be the illustrations of a mighty poem
called "The Earth." Night and morning, sunrise, noon, and sunset, the
succession of seasons, the patient industries of the workers who toil
like nature's own forces, simply, sternly, and with silent strength, all
tell their story here. Millet had passed his youth in the fields, and,
the son of a peasant, he must himself have been the central figure in
many such scenes as those with which he has charmed the world. His
picture of "The Haricot-Gatherer" represents the paternal cottage, and
the figure of the woman in the garden is that of his mother herself.
When he enshrined personal memories like these, no wonder we find in
Millet's work the interpretation of so much that is deepest and most
intimate in the history of man.
The gallery of the portraits of Hans Holbein the younger is well chosen,
and gives some excellent instances of the artist's unsurpassed manner.
There is inevitably something in any picture of Holbein's which holds
the attention by its absolute reality: it is not only natural, but true,
the reflection of an actual personality. An interest attaches to the
portrait of Anne of Cleves, although one hardly finds in it the beauty
which misled Henry VIII. and altered the history of England a little.
Five Novels.
"A Wheel of Fire." By Arlo Bates. New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons.
"As it was Written: A Jewish Musician's Story." By Sidney Luska.
New York: Cassell & Co.
"Love--or a Name." By Julian Hawthorne. Boston: Ticknor & Co.
"A Social Experiment." By E. A. P. Searing. New York and London:
G. P. Putnam's Sons.
"For Lilias." By Rosa Nouchette Carey. Philadelphia: J. B.
Lippincott Company.
Mr. Arlo Bates's novel "A Wheel of Fire" shows such skilful
construction, is so nicely balanced in its parts, while its literary
execution is so far above the common, that we can only wish the author
had expended such faithful and conscientious work upon a plot less
hopelessly dreary than one must be which hinges upon the problem of
hereditary insanity. Every other human infirmity may be rounded off,
merged into a lofty ideal of acceptance, renunciation, and expiation.
But under no imaginable conditions can madness be regarded as something
from which the heart and soul of man does not shudderingly recoil.
Accordingly, a heroine who is haunted, beset, and finally driven crazy
by the dread of the fatal inheritance being in her blood seems set apart
from the fluctuations and hesitations of maidenly passion. There is
something unhealthy, eerie, in the story Mr. Bates has made and in the
situation he has chosen.
Damaris Wainwright's mother has died insane, her brother is a hopeless
lunatic,--in fact, he commits suicide in the early part of the
story,--and she has accepted the conditions fate seems to have imposed,
and has renounced all idea of marriage, when the nephew of her family
lawyer falls in love with her and shows an indomitable resolution to win
her for his wife. The old story of "_femme qui ecoute_" follows.
Damaris is swayed partly by his influence, partly by her own impulses,
and in great measure by the freely-expressed opinion of the specialist
who has had charge of her insane brother, that she is in no danger of
inheriting her mother's malady. Unluckily for her, she half consents to
engage herself to the lawyer. Had she wholly consented or wholly
refused, her doom might perhaps have been averted. We frankly consider
her lover quite unequal to the situation. He imposed upon her long and
lonely musings, sleepless nights and melancholy days, when he should
have given her the support of the strong will and powerful intellect
which the author lays claim to for his hero. Agonizing over painful
doubts is not good for people whose intellects hover on the border-lands
of nervous fantasy. Lincoln, if resolved to marry the unfortunate girl,
should have shown more Lochinvar-like haste. Instead, during the long
interval of waiting, Damaris is allowed to run the whole gamut of
painful experiences, and, naturally, at the climax of the story, her
"fate cries out." Of course this is the author's intention; but we
cannot help feeling that Miss Wainwright had hardly a fair chance. As an
offset to the gloom and melancholy of their tragedy, there is a lively
love-affair between two young people who snatch a fearful joy in the
midst of as dreary an environment as can easily be imagined. Both Miss
Dimmont and Dr. Chauncey Wilson are life-like, although not engaging,
characters, and the doctor, in particular, although we do not think
highly of his science, is a vigorous and consistent creation.
Although the plot of "As it was Written" turns on the murder of the
heroine, the book is yet a considerably livelier one than Mr. Bates's,
and imposes no such burden of hopeless misery on the reader. A startling
and mysterious crime is dear to the human imagination, and here we are
confronted with one hideous in its cruelty and inexplicable in its
circumstances. The story is told by the passionate lover of the murdered
Veronika, and there is much youthful eloquence and pathos in the
description of his meeting with the lovely young Jewess, their sympathy
in art,--for both are musicians,--their ardent hopes and beliefs for
each other. They are to be married in a fortnight, when the frightful
act is interposed which transforms the whole aspect of the world for
the young man. The reader must discover for himself the key to the
tragedy. The book is one of those which the phenomenal success of
"Called Back" summoned into existence. That clearly proved that the
public loved a mystery and a sensational _denouement_, and ever since
the annals of crime have been rummaged for horrors. But "As it was
Written" has an advantage over other works of its class in a certain
charm and freshness, not only from its Jewish setting, but from the
fervid youthful feeling which gives a pleasing and natural touch to the
narrative.
Warren Bell, the hero of Mr. Julian Hawthorne's "Love--or a Name," finds
himself, at first presentation, on his way to offer marriage to Miss
Nell Anthony, who has just been left motherless, and to whom he feels
that he owes this manly tribute. He acquits his conscience of this duty,
but performs it nevertheless in such a jerky, unlover-like fashion that
few young women, certainly not one of Miss Anthony's force of character,
could have been imposed upon. "I thought you l-loved me," said he. Which
surely is not the way to win a fair lady. Much to his comfort, as well
as to his ingenuous surprise, he is refused, and goes back to New York,
having renounced "Love" and decided to care only for a "Name." Mr.
Hawthorne seems to have made an effort to work into the story of his
hero a faithful account of New York "ring"-management and official
corruption. Warren Bell finds a patron in Mr. Drayton, who has all sorts
of ambitious schemes to further, and offers his committees and his
confederates a "big game" in the way of "water-works" stocks, and the
like. These pictures of corrupt judges and dishonest corporations have
some probability: they show us many clearly-developed sensual and
mercenary scoundrels; they are all, very possibly, portraits from life;
but they are all excessively crude in their likenesses and inexpressibly
wearisome. It is a distasteful and unsavory world to which the author
introduces us: if he wishes to show us consummate rascals we insist that
he should wrap them in some veil of decency, if not of art, and not fill
his pages with incidents and talk which properly belong to the
police-court. Mr. Hawthorne finally rescues his hero from the ignoble
set from whom he has luckily escaped winning a very bad name, and makes
him seek his happiness instead in love, which Miss Anthony obligingly
consents to give him. The other characters mostly expiate their crimes
and misdemeanors in a succession of tragic and unpleasant incidents, and
one closes the book with annoyance that so raw, tentative, and
unpleasant a story should have been forced upon one's attention by its
bearing the signature of a writer who can do so much better.
"A Social Experiment" treats of the experiences of a pretty mill-girl,
the daughter of a washerwoman, who becomes the _protegee_ of a wealthy
and capricious woman of the world, who educates her, introduces her to
society, then finally drops her and permits her to seek her native
obscurity, where she withers and dies of a broken heart. The story is
very well told, but with a good deal of needless discussion as to the
right or wrong of the experiment. The heroine has complicated matters by
a secret marriage to a man in her own rank of life, which later becomes
distasteful to her, and the duties of which she refuses to fulfil. Like
the three preceding novels in our list, "A Social Experiment" is rather
doleful, and seems to have been written for any other purpose rather
than to cheer and stimulate the average reader who longs for pictures of
life which rouse pleasant fancies and kindle tender sentiments. None of
these books are in the least degree commonplace, but, by excluding what
is chiefly dear and precious to the heart and mind of common humanity,
they exclude many of the qualities which achieve success for a novel.
In "For Lilias," on the other hand, the author avails herself of all the
agreeable traditions of English fiction: there are warm and well-lighted
rooms, well-to-do people, regular meals, afternoon tea, plenty of
bread-and-butter, and a gentle ripple of friendly, soft-voiced
conversation. This may not be original or exciting, but, after a good
deal of crude sensation through some thousand and odd pages, "ways of
pleasantness and paths of peace" are refreshing to the critic, who
believes that although the novelist should not sacrifice his meaning to
the requisitions of mere agreeableness, out of regard for art and the
taste of his readers, he should still have beauty in some degree or
other as his chief end in view.