=On the Field of Glory.= By Henryk Sienkiewicz. Little, Brown &
Co., Boston.
After the reader has finished reading this book he disapproves of the
title. He has been taken into ancient Poland, where the winter snows
lie deep, where the wolves of the forest come with the night to make
danger for the traveler. He has been shown how the upper class lived in
the time of the Soldier-King, John Sobieski. He follows the thread of
a passionate and tender and happily ended love-story. He laughs with
and at the four brothers, the huge, rude, boisterous, but brave and
good-hearted foresters. He feels impressed by the genius of the author
during the whole time, for he knows that this strange Polish world, with
its unfamiliar men and women, is a creation born of the mental processes
of a great literary artist.
It is not an historical novel in the sense that “Quo Vadis” was. There is
no field of glory at all. John Sobieski does not appear before us as Nero
was made to do in the book just named.
The John Sobieski of this novel might be any other King. So far as we are
told about his appearance, manners, dress, personal peculiarities, he
might have been Rudolph of Hapsburg or Henry of Valois.
There are no battles, no sieges, no heroic advance or retreat. As the
book closes, the Polish army has set out from Cracow to Vienna; and
that’s as near as we approach the field of glory.
With the heroine the reader never gets in full sympathy. She drives away
the man who has always loved her and whom she loves _without knowing it_.
She then consents to wed her hideous, lecherous, old guardian. More
indignant than the bride, the spirits of the Unseen World resent this
unnatural union, and they prevent it by claiming the groom while the
marriage feast is being eaten.
With the hero the reader is on good terms from first to last, for his is
a fine character finely drawn.
When the guardian and intended husband is dead, and the rejected lover
is far away, the hero is subjected to trial and temptation, beset by
dangers, marked for destruction by a lustful brute, neglected and hated
by family connections. It is then that human interest of the deepest kind
centres in the poor orphan girl _Panna Anulka_, whom we had condemned
on account of her readiness to marry old _Pan Gideon_. We follow her
fortunes then with painful attention and we rejoice when she is saved.
While “On the Field of Glory” is not, perhaps, so great a book as “Quo
Vadis,” its atmosphere is purer, its store of love more tender and its
portrayal of ancient manners and character apparently quite as faithful.
=The Strange Story of the Quillmores.= By A. L. Chatterton.
Stitt Publishing Company, New York.
To write a novel which shall hold the reader with a strong and constant
grip, and yet give him no love-story, is a feat not done by everyone that
tries it. Mr. Chatterton tells no story of love, but I have not read many
books that interested me more than “The Strange Story of the Quillmores.”
Mr. Chatterton’s pictures of life are true to life: his men are the men
who wear breeches—not impossible abstractions who say or do things which
no human beings ever said or did. And his women are as real as his men.
_Uncle I’_ and his store, where the neighbors buy all sorts of things,
from ham to coffins, and where a group of loafers and tattlers is
generally on hand, are as well known to the reader as if he had been
there. _Uncle I’_ must be a character taken from life. He is full of
quiet humor, homely wisdom, sound common sense, manly courage and loyalty.
Old-fashioned _Uncle I’_, keeping his old-fashioned carry-all store,
swapping stories and repartee with his old-fashioned neighbors,
struggling heroically with his old-fashioned telephone, and with it all,
living up to the best standards of honesty and usefulness—yes, _Uncle I’_
is a complete artistic success.
So is _Doctor Gus_. True, he reminds the reader, in a general way, of Ian
Maclaren’s Scotch country doctor, but _Doctor Gus_ is American, and he is
stamped with sufficient individuality to make him a very live man to the
reader.
What could be better than the old German woman, _Mother Treegood_? The
chapter in which _Mother Treegood_ comes to visit Uncle I’s wife, who is
broken with grief on account of her dying daughter, is one that is worthy
of Dickens. It has the heart-throb of human sorrow, human sympathy, human
love.
I don’t know of anything more touching, in its simple unpretentious way,
than the story of how _Mother Treegood’s_ boys, the twins, ran away from
home, and how one of them was drowned in the Ohio River, and was sent
home for burial.
“My pretty boy was to our house brought, aber no one could him know—he
was in the wasser—de water—so long—_oh das Kalte, Kalte Wasser!_ so many,
many days. I took more of the fever—und go out of my head—und so I never
my Liebling seen again.”
The cry that was heard in Ramah, “_Oh, that cold, cold water!_”
Then, later on, there came a little box of tin-iron, “mit a hole cut in
the on-top side.” But let _Mother Treegood_ tell it in her own way:
“One day there came by the express company a little bundle. When it
was opened—it was an oyster can—a box of tin-iron, mit a hole cut in
the on-top side. The letter was from de other boy—und it say—that his
brudder, who vas ver-drownded, did begin his business life in a hotel
in Cincinnetty, as a bellboy, und he safe his money und put it in the
oyster can. Und in dat oyster box was the shin-plasters, the five
centses, und de ten centses—yoost as he take them in for noospapers and
shoe-blacking—und it was yoost enough, ach mein lieber Gott!—yoost enough
to pay for his grave at Brookfill.”
Surely this is very effective. It probably happened just that way. To
know that it could, and perhaps _did_, is just the right impression for
the author of a novel to make on the reader.
Another splendid episode is that wherein a “run on the bank” begins,
as the funeral of Colonel Quillmore is in progress. The chapters which
relate the tragedy, the fire in the Colonel’s laboratory, the wild ride
of _Father Lessing_ and _Uncle I’_; the dramatic climax where _Mrs.
Quillmore_ lashes herself into raving madness; the funeral procession
whose mourners get caught up in the growing excitement of the “run on the
bank,” and leave the hearse to fly to the bank for their money; the nerve
and resource of _Doc. Gus_ in saving the bank, and in saving the cashier
from the would-be lynchers—are chapters which bear convincing testimony
to the power and creativeness of the author.
The book is so finely conceived and written that one is tempted to scold
the author for a few glaring faults which are well-nigh inexcusable.
Why paint _L’Oiseau_ so black when he was to be white-washed at the end?
There was no need to have him behave so brutally to the boy, _Lanny
Quillmore_. It was a blunder to make him insult the boy, incur the
hatred of the boy, assault the boy, and drive the boy from his own home.
The lad is allowed to think and believe that _L’Oiseau_ is on terms of
criminal intimacy with _Mrs. Quillmore, Lanny’s_ mother. There was no
necessity for this. If _L’Oiseau_ was brother-in-law to _Mrs. Quillmore_,
and was prompted by paternal interest in paying her such suspicious
attention, and in being out in the woods with her at unseasonable hours
in the night, why permit the lady’s son to torture himself under a
misapprehension?
What earthly reason was there for keeping from her only son a knowledge
of the fact that _L’Oiseau_ was her brother-in-law, and that her abnormal
physical and mental condition required these unusual and suspicious
attentions from him?
Again, _L’Oiseau_ was rambling about at night with _Mrs. Quillmore_ when
she lost consciousness, fell by the wayside, was found by the priest, and
succored by _Doc. Gus_.
What had become of her escort, _L’Oiseau_?
He had mysteriously disappeared, and _Doc. Gus_ had a right to put the
worst construction upon his conduct. _Father Lessing_ knew the truth; why
did _Father Lessing_ allow _Doc. Gus_ to remain in ignorance?
But the most serious blunder in the plot relates to the climax—the fire
in _Colonel Quillmore’s_ laboratory.
_Doc. Gus_ sees the shadow of two men thrown upon the window shade. Only
one of these men is accounted for, and the reader is left not only in
doubt as to what happened, but in hopeless confusion. He cannot adopt any
theory which will explain _all the facts_.
Now, _that_ is against the rules. Let the plot be ever so complicated,
the mystery ever so deep, the author _must_ either clear it up himself,
or furnish the reader with the clue. Wilkie Collins, in spite of his
bewildering tangles, unravels everything before he quits. In “Edwin
Drood,” the book which Dickens was writing when death interrupted the
story, the author had constructed one of his most involved and difficult
plots. Before he had furnished the key to the riddle, he died. Yet
Edgar Allan Poe was able to tell, with unerring certainty, just how the
story was meant to end. By a keen analysis of the facts which Dickens
had already related, and by a course of reasoning that left no room for
doubt, Poe demonstrated that _Jasper_, the guardian and devoted friend
of _Edwin Drood_, had murdered him; that jealousy was the motive; that
the body of the victim was hidden in the new tomb which the inflated ass,
_Sapsea_, had recently built for the deceased _Mrs. Sapsea_; and that the
corpse was located by old _Durdles_, the drunken workman whose skill with
his hammer was so great that he could, by tapping, tapping, tapping on
the outside or a wall, tell whether a foreign substance, such as a human
body, was inclosed within.
Poe’s own matchless story, “The Gold Bug,” illustrates the rule which
Mr. Chatterton broke. There are all sorts of mystifications to start
with, but they are cleared up at the end.
Even in Frank Stockton’s famous “The Lady or the Tiger,” the rule is
kept. The reader is left in a dilemma, but he can clear up everything by
choosing one horn or the other. If he says that it is the lady who is
behind the door which is about to be opened, no mystery remains. If he
says that it is the tiger which is behind the door, nothing is left of
the puzzle.
But in the Quillmore story there is no possible explanation _which will
dispose of the facts_. If _Colonel Quillmore_ died in the laboratory,
and _L’Oiseau_ did _not_ kill him, who did? What about the _two_ men
quarreling in there at the time of the tragedy? What becomes of that
other man? And how could _Quillmore’s_ son meet him again in Paris? With
the exception of _L’Oiseau_, no one had _the motive_ to kill _Colonel
Quillmore_; and the author made a point of showing that other people were
afraid to go near the laboratory.
But if the _Colonel_ did _not_ die in the laboratory, how did his false
teeth get into the mouth of the dead man when _Doc. Gus_ dragged him out
of the flames? How did the _Colonel’s Masonic ring_ get on the dead man’s
finger? How did the _Colonel_ make his escape without being seen, and,
_who was it that he quarreled with and killed before he fled_? Nobody
appears to have been missing from the neighborhood. Usually when somebody
is killed, somebody is missed.
Had Mr. Chatterton refrained from putting another man in the laboratory,
had he left the _Colonel_ dead in the flames, identified by his Masonic
ring, had he left the reader to suppose that the sudden death of the
_Colonel_ and the sudden blaze which broke out in the building resulted
from some dangerous chemical experiment, such as the _Colonel_ delighted
in—the story would have lost not a grain of interest and would have
escaped a flagrant violation of the rules of literary construction.
=The Game and the Candle.= By Frances Davidge. D. Appleton &
Co., New York.
Frances Davidge set herself too difficult a task when she attempted to
make the characters in her novel. “The Game and the Candle,” speak in
epigrams on every other page. The consequence is that the story, with
its really brilliant beginning, develops into a commonplace love-story,
and is only saved from absolute banality by its unforeseen and dramatic
ending. In the field of literature which attempts to picture New York
society the story will not find an enduring place, but it serves its
purpose very well. The novelists are numberless who have sought to
satirize our men and women of wealth and leisure; but few have given us
any books that have lived longer than their allotted span of one brief
season. The big society novel has not yet been written. Miss Davidge
evidently knows a great deal of the foibles, the follies and the manners
of the people of whom she writes, and her career is worth watching. At
present she seems a bit immature and prolix, but there is no doubt as
to her ability to write amazingly clever dialogue and to tell a story
logically and well. Some of her characters are greatly overdrawn. One
wishes that there were less of _Gussie Regan_, the hair-dresser; and
_Emily Blair_, lovable as she is, could never have existed. Altogether,
however, the story is pleasing and will find, doubtless, a large and
appreciative audience.