"Nathaniel Parker Willis." By Henry A.Beers.
"Edgar Allan Poe." By George E. Woodbury.
(American Men of Letters Series.)
Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
The American Men of Letters Series is giving us some excellent biographies,
well written, the facts well assimilated and grouped, and the whole
treatment so accurate and graphic as to be full not only of instruction
but of entertainment. Formerly American biography was so deficient in just
those qualities which endear English biographical literature to us, that
we were inclined to believe that the fault was inherent in Americans and
American life, that our days and works lacked picturesqueness and color
and left no salient points for the chronicler to seize. We now see that
the meagre harvests of former biographers were due to their hasty and
superficial generalizations. For at least three of the volumes in this
series--the life of James Fenimore Cooper and the two now before us--may
be favorably compared with the best work in the English Men of Letters
Series, which is indeed high praise. Unusual and striking as were the
incidents in the life of Cooper, they had completely dropped out of sight
of the present generation. The biographers of Willis and Poe had no such
advantage. Willis is still remembered, not only as a _litt?teur_ and
journalist, but as a man about town, while legend has never ceased to be
busy with the memory of Poe, so that the traditions of his strange career
are curiously linked to and incorporated with his best-known works.
The present estimate of Willis as a literary man is so slight that it
seems almost like impaling a butterfly to apply critical tests to his
writings. Professor Beers has nevertheless made it a profitable and
interesting study to follow him through his career, which was, upon the
whole, singularly fortunate. Few authors have possessed so happy a knack
of making the present moment both enjoyable and profitable. His personal
endowments were all in his favor, and no sooner was he launched in Europe
than he gained a great social success. England, in particular, opened some
of its pleasantest circles to him. Not only did Lady Blessington take him
up, but he became a favorite with many of the most lofty and exclusive
members of the aristocracy. Never was opportunity more auspicious, for
Willis was a born worshipper of refinements and luxuries. He had starved
in America for beauty and color, and dear to him were all these adjuncts
of a highly-civilized life. It was his mission to reproduce for Americans
lively impressions in letters to newspapers at home, and in stories and
sketches, in which he drew freely not only upon his own experiences, but
upon all the hints and suggestions he could pick up. His industry and
ingenious expedients were well rewarded: in fact, one is a little
surprised to find that in 1842 he was writing four articles monthly for
four magazines, and receiving one hundred dollars for each, which makes a
sum total of almost five thousand a year. He was, besides, handsomely paid
for his books both in England and at home, and had generally on hand some
writing for illustrated volumes of travel, so that for many years he may
easily be said to have made seven or eight thousand a year.
No greater contrast to Willis--the man of the world, who knew how to turn
every habit, talent, and instinct to account--could be found than poor Poe,
all whose opportunities were wasted, spoiled, or flung away. It is the
most difficult thing in the world to arrive at anything like a complete
idea of the identity of so fantastic a man as the author of the "Raven."
The faults, inconsistencies, and contradictions of his character perplex
and dismay one the more closely one looks into his letters and the minor
incidents of his career. Mr. Woodbury has, however, acquitted himself well
in this difficult task, and has in many cases separated truth from
long-accepted fiction and given us a clear picture of what has hitherto
been blurred and distorted by unfaithful friends and foes. The story is a
most hopeless and pitiful one, its gloom brightened and its bitterness
sweetened by but few of the consolations which belong to average human
lives. The causes of this are apparent enough: they were constituents of
Poe's brain and heart; but for him to have been otherwise organized would
have been for his unique work to have had no existence.
Recent Fiction.
"Troubled Waters: A Problem of To-Day." By Beverley Ellison Warner.
Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company.
"A Marsh Island," By Sarah Orne Jewett. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
"The Duchess Emilia." By Barrett Wendell. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co.
"Across the Chasm." "Within the Capes." New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
"One of the Duanes." By Alice King Hamilton. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott
Company.
"Tales from Many Sources." Vols. I. and II. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co.
There is a generous use of good material in Mr. Warner's novel, the scene
of which is laid in a New England manufacturing town, with all the sharp
and diversified social contrasts, the eager strifes and competitions, that
belong to such a community, clearly portrayed. The author calls his story
"A Problem of To-Day," and it is his study to press home to the
consciousness of the reader the series of dull and wearing miseries, the
bitter discouragements and pathetic misfortunes, which pursue the
working-man whose most faithful labor insures him no secure hold upon
future comfort and prosperity. It is both the strength and the weakness of
the book that its most prominent figure, Richard Wilton, is a wealthy
mill-owner who has risen to his position in a way which makes him an
unfair representative of the class of capitalists. A man without intellect
or humanity, without faith, without law, a robber of the dead, a despoiler
of the widow and orphan, a successful impostor, a remorseless brute who
takes pleasure in outraging and crushing his subordinates, would naturally
be a bad master and make his work-people miserable by heaped-up tyrannies.
His faults are not the inevitable outgrowth of a position of power and the
conflict between capital and labor, but are the result of his own
individual depravity. But this man's personality is a powerful one, and
his personality is the motive of most of the dramatic events which crowd
the pages. The history of the "strike" which follows the reduction of
wages at Trade Lawn Mills is faithfully and vigorously given. Mr. Warner
evidently knows the temper of workingmen, their patience and impatience,
their trials, temptations, and weaknesses. He gauges with pitiful fidelity
the faults of character and purpose which make almost every "strike"
contain within itself the germs of collapse and failure. The plot is
cleverly conceived and successfully carried out. That the bubble which has
for a time floated Richard Wilton's frauds and crimes bursts at last, and
that the villain is brought to well-merited disgrace, is a matter of
course. Trade Lawn Mills pass into the hands of their rightful owners, and
certain co-operative ideas which are an essential ingredient of the story
and its applied moral are carried out. The author attaches high importance
to co-operative schemes, and finds in them the clear solution of the
vexing questions concerning the future of the workingman. As an offset to
the somewhat dark and troubled pictures of life which the story presents,
there are sunny and pleasant passages in which a High-Church clergyman and
a young lady by the name of Sydney Worthington figure. The whole book is,
in fact, inspired by a spirit of hopefulness and a sure belief that divine
order overrules the efforts, successes, and failures of the humblest human
being and that a way of deliverance is sure to come.
If "A Marsh Island" shows no distinct advance upon Miss Jewett's earlier
work, it is yet a pretty, artistic product which delicately emphasizes the
author's best points and gives us her distinct charm without any waste of
effects. Her feeling for rural life and her clear comprehension of rural
people were never better displayed than in this little story. A generous
play of late-summer and autumn radiance lights up its every nook and
corner; it is mellow with warm color and odorous of late fruits and
flowers. We cannot help finding the artist visitor, that product of the
bloom of Boston civilization, a little hackneyed and time-worn. He has
surely done his part in literature, and may retire to the heaven of the
dilettante. But all the inhabitants of Marsh Island are human and
attractive, and the untiring industries of the well-ordered household
soothe one like the rhythm of a song. The bizarre, incongruous, but, upon
the whole, satisfactory specimen of New England "help" which Miss Jewett
generally introduces finds an excellent example here in the person of
Temperance Kipp. Squire Owen is a genial man, so overflowing with generous
nature that he can afford to fill out the more meagre humanities of his
wife, who has susceptibilities, tempers, and moods. "They used to tell a
story," he one day remarks to Mrs. Owen, with great satisfaction, when she
has a distinct grievance about clothes,--"I do' know but you've heard it,
--about old Sergeant Copp an' his wife, that was always quarrellin'.
Somebody heard her goin' on one day. Says she, 'I do wish somebody'd give
me a lift as fur as Westmarket. I do feel's if I ought to buy me a cap. I
ain't got a decent cap to my back: if I was to die to-morrow, I ain't got
no cap that's fit to lay me out in.' 'Blast ye,' says he, 'why didn't ye
die when ye had a cap?'" The more impassioned side of life does not suit
Miss Jewett so well as the humorous and pastoral; but each detail about
her heroine is attractive, and nothing in recent fiction, is more true,
touching, and womanly than Doris's journey to Westmarket in the autumnal
dawn to keep her lover at home from the fishing-banks.
"The Duchess Emilia" is one of those stories which ought to be withdrawn
from the province of criticism by the fact of their being the delight of
the reader, thrilling him with their weirdness and firing his imagination
by their splendid audacity. If the attention is so feebly grasped as to
permit one to reason about an impossible situation, it becomes at once
extravagant and absurd. One would require to be considerably carried away
by illusion to be moved by Mr. Wendell's story. The hero is a
New-Englander, born of mad parents (they met while both were patients in
an insane asylum); and this inherited curse would seem to be enough for
any hero to totter under. It becomes unimportant, however, when we
discover that he has furthermore been taken possession of at birth by the
spirit of a wicked and fascinating Italian duchess, who wishes to expiate
her crimes before leaving this mundane sphere. One might readily expect
some startling effects from the development of a plot thus removed from
the haven of probabilities and set afloat in a sea of the wildest romance.
The Duchess Emilia's repentance, however, seems to have ended the interest
of her career, and her good deeds are appallingly dull; in fact, her whole
personality thins away into insignificance.
"Across the Chasm" opens with fair promise, and our introduction to
Virginia life and a talkative old negro "somewhar up in de nineties" is
one which we should be glad to follow up by further acquaintance. This
serves, however, merely as preamble, and in the next chapter we are
transported to a city called Washington, although for characteristic
flavor it might as well be any other place, and we enter upon the events
attending a young lady's entrance into society. This might all be very
pretty and pleasant, except for the deadly seriousness of the author. It
is entirely frivolous and unimportant, but frivolity may be made charming
and full of suggestion. Points of etiquette and behavior engage the minds,
hearts, and passions of the personages of the story. It is a sort of
animated illustration of the little book called "Don't." For example,
"_Don't_ leave your overcoat and rubbers in the hall when you go to make a
call on a lady for the first time," receives practical exemplification
when Major King, a high-toned Southerner, with unbuttoned frock-coat and
baggy trousers, pays a visit to the heroine. He not only takes off his
overcoat and rubbers, but tilts his chair, stays till midnight, and in
every way calls down the wrath of that accomplished prig Mr. Louis Gaston,
who is a high-toned Northerner. This yawning gulf between the generous
faults of the South and the fastidious Phariseeism of the North is the
problem of the book. The story is slight, wholly conventional, and rather
commonplace, but it is gracefully told, and the conversations are not
without interest.
Mr. Howard Pyle's "Within the Capes" belongs to a widely different
category from the pretty feminine Southern sketch, and is quite equal to
the most insatiable requirements, containing half a dozen successful kinds
of fiction in itself. As a love-story, it is charming; as a sea- and
shipwreck- and treasure-finding-story, it offers a fair challenge not only
to Russell, but to Stevenson himself; while as a detective-story it is as
good as most. The adventures are related by the hero, one Captain Tom
Granger, who toward the end of his long life feels a desire to have his
strange history live in his own version, and not in the fables of the
gossips. A characteristic quaintness of expression gives validity to the
narrative, with plenty of homely enforcement of Tom Granger's wit and
wisdom.
"One of the Duanes" offers a vivid picture of the life which goes on among
the officers and officers' wives and daughters who make up a little world
within a world at our army and naval stations. Mrs. Hamilton has depicted
the interests and excitements, the gossip and the scandals, in a way which
impresses the reader as being faithful and without exaggeration. The story
is interesting, and the book is thoroughly readable and enjoyable.
Two or three little volumes containing the best short stories that have
been published ought to be a desirable addition to any library-table, to
be picked up by a chance caller or read aloud on a rainy evening. And
"Tales from all Sources" fairly well answer one's requirements of what
such collections should contain, being grave and gay, bizarre and
frivolous, to suit the various tastes. We should be glad to see Bulwer's
"The Haunted and the Haunters" (called in some editions "The House and the
Brain") reproduced in such a collection. The fault of this series, if it
be a fault, is that most of the stories are well within the recollection
of any one who has read the English magazines for the past few years,
--"The Black Poodle," for example, and "The Pavilion on the Links," being
matters of yesterday. However, both are sufficiently good to command a
second reading.