For our part, we prefer to depend upon the octogenarian who has just
spoken, and who asserts his membership in one of the oldest families in
New York, for an opinion upon the accuracy of “The House of Mirth” as a
Society novel. As a novel pure and simple it seems to us to be radically
defective in imaginative power, slow and cumbrous in construction, and
wholly ineffective to impose an illusion. We say this with regret because
we have read a good many of the author’s short stories from the time
the first volume of them was issued; and the impression conveyed by her
work in the short story field, as contrasted by the impression of this
novel, makes clearer to us than ever the conviction that to write a short
story a short-story writer is required, and to write a novel a novelist,
and they have always been two persons from Mr. Kipling down and across.
The author’s style is clear, sharp, refined, as before; but the gross
defect of “The House of Mirth” is that the characters are pushed here and
there by the author like so many wooden soldiers on a cardboard field
of battle. They have no more volition than marionettes. In fact they
are merely described names except in the instances of the three chief
characters. One could have borne with the waxlike fibre of the attendant
persons if the figure of _Lily Bart_, the heroine, would stand the gaze
of the naked eye during even half the book. _Lily_ is described by the
author as possessing a fine sense of diplomacy in intercourse with the
people of her set, yet her whole register of action from the first page
reveals her as moving through the comedy without prudence, yet without
conscience, with maneuver, yet without skill; with an under-appeal to
the reader’s sympathy, yet exasperating the reader until in the moment
of tragedy he feels that the heroine deserved all she got and ought to
have got it sooner. But, when one gets away from the book, one feels that
the fault is not the fault of the character, but of the author who has
paltered by trying to make literary academics and psychology square with
life itself and a good story.
The minor irritations of the book are the absolutely fictional flavor of
the names of most of the characters, the use of English or Continental
idiom, and the mummery of the illustrations. Among the English
phrases which the author so much affects is the word _charwoman_ for
_scrubwoman_. It may be that Society calls a scrubwoman a charwoman, but
we would like to see any society man or woman do it to the lady’s face.
It is announced that Clyde Fitch is to dramatize “The House of Mirth” for
production next fall and that he will adhere to the construction of the
story as much as possible. The book is worthy of Mr. Fitch’s lofty talent.