Three Guardsmen,” by Alexandre Dumas. The author claims in his preface
a historical origin for his novel. However that may be, the plot seems
plausible in spite of its extravagances, and never was there a book in
which men conspired and slaughtered each other more merrily, nor in
which the mere strenuous life without moral accessories has found a
more perfect embodiment.
The book in its way is a masterpiece. The style is simple and luminous
to such a degree as would hardly be possible in any other language
than that in which it was written. No work in the world is more easy
to read, to understand, or to translate. The old French dictum that no
words should be used in literature which can not be understood upon the
market-place here attains its highest realization.
As for the characters, they are of the simplest type. The dashing
devil-may-care soldier and adventurer, the deep drinker, the heavy
player, the man who with equal gayety defies the bullets of the enemy
and the commonest precepts of morality, has here his apotheosis.
Perhaps the hero of the book even more than D’Artagnan himself
is Athos, the chief of the three musketeers, who, having made an
unfortunate marriage in his youth, has forsaken his name and station
and embarked upon a life of mere adventure. We love him and admire him,
and yet it is hard to tell why upon any logical or ethical principles
we should do either. Yet when he gets very drunk, or when he hangs his
wife because he finds that she bears upon her shoulder the mark of a
criminal conviction, we feel that he has done in each case exactly the
right thing. Generally a novelist seeks by contrasting his hero with
more commonplace characters to set him off in relief, but in this novel
almost everybody is a hero, and all are equally and superlatively great
and admirable, except perhaps the poor woman who has been hanged and
comes to life again and engages in divers diabolical plots against the
rest of the world.
JANE EYRE
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
“Jane Eyre” is a book which impresses the reader with its power,--I
might say its masculine power, were it not for the fact that the author
gives us at every turn the woman’s point of view.
The narrative, like that of “David Copperfield,” is in the form of an
autobiography, and the plot, which is quite simple, has only that sort
of unity which the heroine gives it. Yet the work glows with intense
passion and the characters are so faithful to nature that they convince
us that vivid personal experience must have come to the aid of the
author’s imagination in delineating them.
Jane Eyre, an orphan, is abused and mistreated in childhood, first in
the family of Mrs. Reed, where she is brought up, and afterwards at the
Lowood charity school, where she is first a pupil and then becomes a
teacher. She seeks a situation as governess, and finds employment at
Thornfield Hall, the residence of a Mr. Rochester, who, after a wild,
dissipated, wandering life, has come, some time before, into possession
of this splendid property. Here she has the charge of Adele, his ward.
There is a certain uncanny secret about Thornfield which the
governess finds herself unable to fathom. She hears wild laughter
and inarticulate sounds in a distant part of the Hall. One night
Rochester’s bed is mysteriously set on fire, and Jane Eyre saves
his life. On another occasion, while the house is full of guests, a
horrible shriek comes from the upper floor and a murder is well nigh
committed by some unknown creature who is hidden there.
In the meantime Mr. Rochester has become greatly interested in his
little governess, who, although quiet and plain in appearance, is
warm-hearted and high-spirited, with a strong sense of duty, great
courage, and an indomitable will. And she on her side becomes
fascinated and at last utterly devoted to her master, a man of
brilliant parts, strong, brusque, proud and autocratic. He offers her
his hand, and she accepts him, to learn, however, in the very presence
of the altar and during the wedding ceremony, that he has another wife!
It seems that in his early years he had been beguiled into a marriage
in the West Indies with a woman whose dissolute courses had wrecked
his life, and had terminated in her own madness, and that this was the
maniac who had occasioned the strange scenes at the Hall.
Jane Eyre now flees from Thornfield, concealing all traces of her
whereabouts. She wanders amid incredible hardships and destitution,
and at last finds shelter at Moor House, the home of St. John
Rivers and his two sisters, who are afterwards discovered to be her
relatives, and with whom she divides a legacy which she receives from
a deceased uncle. St. John is a country clergyman of high character,
full of zeal, ambition, and fanaticism, and determined to devote
his life to missionary service in India. He seeks her hand, but she
realizes that it is not from love but to make her his fellow laborer
in the work of the Gospel. He has sought to inspire her with his own
enthusiasm, and she is on the point of yielding, when she seems to
hear the voice of Rochester calling to her in pain and anguish. She
returns to Thornfield, and finds that the Hall has been consumed in a
conflagration kindled by the maniac, and that Rochester, who had sought
in vain to save the life of the wretched creature, has been himself
rescued, blind and a cripple, from the ruins. She seeks him and becomes
his wife.
But the bare recital of these leading events gives very little idea of
the characters in this somber and tragic tale, or the feelings which
control their actions. The book must be read through to be understood.
From the very beginning the author strikes a resounding chord in human
nature. Brutality to children stirs us to fury, and no one, not even
Dickens or Victor Hugo, has painted this form of tyranny in livelier
colors than Charlotte Brontë. The conduct of Mrs. Reed and of Rev. Mr.
Brocklehurst, the sanctified and inhuman director of Lowood school,
arouses our hot resentment.
Of course there are blemishes in the book. Sometimes the conversation
is too carefully written to be natural. Then there is an intrinsic
improbability in the plot. Why should a young woman so self-sufficient
as the heroine consent to marry Rochester before she had solved the
secret of Thornfield? But these defects in the novel are trifling
by the side of its abounding excellences. At nearly every point the
heroine awakens our admiration; we feel (sometimes, perhaps, in spite
of our better judgment) that she is doing right; and so masterly is the
author’s portraiture that, in spite of many repulsive features, she
awakens a stronger sympathy for the seared and blighted Rochester than
for the pure and devoted yet inexorable St. John Rivers. Jane Eyre is
an eloquent novel. It is emphatically a work of genius.
CARMEN
PROSPER MERIMÉE
It has always seemed to me that “Carmen” was a story of great power and
told with wonderful skill. I know not whether it be fact, nor whether
the author has learned it in the way he says; but so convincing is
the narrative, it seems to me impossible that it is a mere product of
the imagination. Yet the leading characters are so abnormal that I
sometimes wonder why I believe this story so thoroughly. It must be
because it is true.
The author, in pursuing certain archæological researches to discover
the site of the ancient battle of Munda, comes with his guide upon a
secluded amphitheatre among the rocks, where he suddenly encounters an
outlaw, José Navarro, whom he makes his friend by the exchange of some
simple courtesies and by warning him at the humble venta where they
lodge together, of the approach of the officers of justice.
Some days afterwards, while the author was leaning upon the parapet of
the quay at Cordova, Carmen, a young gipsy girl of a strange and savage
beauty, comes and sits near him. After some conversation he accompanies
her to her residence to have his fortune told. Suddenly the door opens,
and Navarro, in a very bad humor, enters the room. A quarrel ensues
between him and Carmen in the gipsy language, and it appears from the
gestures that the young girl is urging the bandit to cut the stranger’s
throat. He refuses, takes the author by the arm, leads him into the
street, and directs him home.
Some time afterwards the narrator, in passing through Cordova, learns
that Navarro has been condemned to death, and upon a visit to the
prison the day before his execution, the bandit tells him the strange
story of his liaison with this wild and cruel, yet fascinating girl.
At the great cigar factory at Seville she has a bloody altercation
with one of her fellow operatives. Navarro, a rough, green soldier
stationed in that city, is ordered to conduct her to prison. She
talks to him in his own Basque tongue, pretending to be his fellow
countryman, and pleads with him to release her. Inflamed with a
sudden passion, he suffers her to escape, and is himself degraded
and imprisoned. She secretly sends to him in his cell the means of
securing his freedom, and after his release she gives him the liveliest
proofs of her gratitude and affection. But she is capricious and
fickle to the last degree. Urged by jealousy, Navarro kills an officer
and is compelled to desert the army, and at her instigation he takes
up the life, first of a smuggler, and then of a bandit. She is the
controlling spirit of a little band of outlaws, whose diabolical
crimes are described in a manner so natural that they cease to appear
extraordinary. Navarro slays the husband of Carmen, a one-eyed
miscreant, and takes his place as her lawful lord. But she soon falls
in love with a _picador_, and although this passion is as ephemeral as
the rest, Navarro is seized with fury. He strives to persuade her to
go with him to some distant region where they can begin life anew. He
will forgive the past; he asks only her companionship and love. But
she spurns him; he may kill her if he likes, but she will not live
with him. She scorns even to flee or to defend herself. At his command
she rides with him to a lonely place, where he stabs her, while her
eyes flash defiance. He buries her in the wood and delivers himself to
justice.
In spite of her crimes and infidelities, there is a touch of heroism
and magnanimity in this wild creature which commands our admiration,
and explains the passion she awakens in the heart of Navarro.
“Carmen” is a short story, meagre both in incidents and characters,
but its few touches are those of the master. It is a work of consummate
art.
DAVID COPPERFIELD
CHARLES DICKENS
“David Copperfield” and “Henry Esmond” are perhaps the best
illustrations extant of the advantages of the autobiographical method
in fiction, which, whatever may be its drawbacks, is better fitted than
any other to subjective description. It is said that the true function
of the painter is to reproduce things on the canvas, not as they are,
but as they appear to the person observing them. In like manner it is
often the function of the novelist’s art to describe the world, not as
it is, but as it appears to some particular person; and there is no
better way to do this than by an autobiography. The artistic truth of
the picture will appear, when the reader says to himself, “How often
that thing looked just so to me!” Of course the estimate of the truth
of this sort of a picture will vary with the personal temperament of
the reader, but I think most young readers will find an instant bond of
sympathy between David Copperfield and themselves.
At the time I first read it, as a college student, I think no work of
fiction had ever attracted me so greatly. There seemed to be much in it
which corresponded with my own feelings and experiences, and I still
think that those parts of the book that deal with childhood, youth, and
early manhood are very true to nature. David’s description of the home
at Blunderstone where he was born, of the church, of the fowls in the
yard and the fears that they occasioned, of his joy in the house that
was made out of a boat on the sand, of his resentment at the tyranny
of his stepfather, of his school-boy fancies, of his hero-worship of
the brilliant Steerforth,--in short, his general way of looking at the
world is so exactly like that of the ordinary healthy boy under similar
circumstances that these parts of the book are, in the highest and best
sense of the word, very realistic.
But as a whole the work has no such convincing power over me to-day
as it had when I first read it. Some of the characters, indeed,
like little Miss Mowcher, Barkis, and Mr. Creakle, seem more like
puppets and less like real persons than they did. Many of them seem
to carry about with them a sort of trade-mark, to certify to their
genuineness,--Heep’s “humility,” for instance, Murdstone’s “firmness,”
or Littimer’s “respectability”; or perhaps the test of identity is a
formula, like “thinking of the old ’un” of Mrs. Gummidge, or “waiting
for something to turn up” of Micawber. In many cases the picture is a
caricature rather than a real portrait, and yet it has the advantage of
the caricature, that it sets forth in bold relief the leading feature
and fixes itself forever in the memory.
There is little to say about the story, for it is known to all.
Practically three or four stories are woven into one. There is the
story of David himself, a boy who, after a comfortable childhood
with his young widowed mother and her old house servant Peggotty,
falls under the tyranny of a stepfather and his sister, and is sent
to be beaten and abused at Creakle’s school, and when his mother
dies is put out to a miserable and hopeless existence at the dismal
counting-house of Murdstone and Grinby. He runs away, and in absolute
destitution betakes himself to the home of Betsey Trotwood, an aunt
whom he has never seen, but with whom he finds a refuge. Then follows
the description (one of the best chapters in the book) of his school
days at Canterbury; his devotion to Miss Shepherd; his romantic
adoration of Miss Larkins, who marries an elderly hopgrower; his
disastrous fight with a butcher. He is then articled to Mr. Spenlow,
of Doctor’s Commons, to become a proctor, and falls in love with Dora,
Spenlow’s daughter, an affectionate, foolish little creature, whom he
marries. He wins a reputation as an author, and after the death of his
“child-wife,” and a period of travel, finally weds Agnes Wickfield,
who has always loved him, and who, ever since his school days at
Canterbury, has been the guardian spirit of his life.
Intertwined with this story is that of the family of Mr. Peggotty,
the brother of David’s old nurse, who lives in the boat on the sand
at Yarmouth, with his nephew Ham, and Em’ly, his adopted child, a
beautiful creature, who is betrayed by David’s friend Steerforth, with
whom she elopes on the eve of her marriage to Ham, and who afterwards
abandons her. An affecting picture is given of the honest Mr. Peggotty
seeking his poor child through the world; of her final return, and of
the great storm and shipwreck, in which Steerforth goes down, and Ham
loses his life in a vain attempt at rescue.
Another strand in the cord of this remarkable story is that of Micawber
and his family, with whom Copperfield becomes a lodger during his
gloomy days at Murdstone and Grinby’s,--a man who, after various
misfortunes, including poverty, jail, and a wretched life in which he
is made the tool of the hypocritical Uriah Heep, is finally sent to
Australia on the same vessel with Mr. Peggotty and Emily, and begins a
career of ultimate prosperity.
But the story is interesting not so much on account of the plot as of
the people who are in it, and the human interest which runs through the
whole.
In addition to the naturalness of Copperfield’s own feelings, there
are other characters that are very true to life. That of his eccentric
aunt, Betsey Trotwood, is perhaps a little overdrawn at first, in
her interview with the doctor on the occasion of David’s birth, but
afterwards her warmth of heart, frankness, and the strong good sense
which underlie her rude behavior and eccentricities, the combination of
strength and weakness in her nature, call to my own mind at every step
one whom I have intimately known and greatly loved. There is something
immensely refreshing, for instance, in her outbreak at the slimy Uriah
Heep:
“‘If you’re an eel, sir, conduct yourself like one. If you’re a
man, control your limbs, sir. Good God!’ said my aunt, with great
indignation, ‘I’m not going to be serpentined and corkscrewed out
of my senses!’”
Her noble conduct in concealing what she believed to be the defalcation
of her old friend Mr. Wickfield is equally characteristic:
“‘And at last he took the blame upon himself,’ added my aunt,
‘and wrote me a mad letter, charging himself with robbery and
wrong unheard of; upon which I paid him a visit early one
morning, called for a candle, burned the letter, and told him if
he ever could right me and himself to do it, and if he could not,
to keep his own counsel for his daughter’s sake.’”
The “umble,” pious, and vindictive scoundrel, Uriah Heep, has been a
type of whining hypocrisy. The description of him as Copperfield first
saw him is remarkable:
“A red-haired person, a youth of fifteen, as I take it now,
but looking much older; whose hair was cropped as close as the
closest stubble, who had hardly any eyebrows and no eyelashes,
and eyes of a red brown, so unsheltered and unshaded that I
remember wondering how he went to sleep. He was high-shouldered
and bony, dressed in decent black, with a white wisp of a
neckcloth buttoned up to the throat, and had a long, lank,
skeleton hand, which particularly attracted my attention as he
stood at the pony’s head, rubbing his chin and looking up at us
in the chaise.”
On the whole, perhaps Heep’s character is rather a grotesque than a
reality. Everywhere he inspires us with unutterable aversion. He worms
himself into the secrets of Wickfield, his employer, takes advantage
of his weakness for drink, and finally gets possession of much of his
property. Afterwards, in the prison scene, he is equally true to his
snaky nature, and becomes an edifying and pious pattern of the products
of prison reform.
The quiet, respectful, and respectable Littimer, Steerforth’s
serving-man, who seemed to be always saying to the awestruck David,
“You are young, sir; you are very young,”--and who afterwards became
his master’s tool in the disgraceful intrigue with Em’ly, will find
many a counterpart in actual life. There are some of us who in our
youth have felt similar awe in the presence of such a domestic.
Perhaps the most charming chapters in the book are those which
describe the courting, the marriage, and the disastrous housekeeping of
David and his child-wife, Dora, in which the little dog Jip plays such
a conspicuous part. They are a pair of precious young noodles; yet the
love-making, in spite of its absurdity, is so absolutely natural, and
the foolish Dora so utterly affectionate, up to the pathetic scene of
her death, that the incidents awaken a very strong sympathy.
Mr. Micawber, of course, is an exaggeration; but how many men have we
known who possessed some of his essential traits,--his stilted diction,
his sudden alternations of supreme joy and utter despair, his mania for
letter-writing, his visionary hopes and schemes in the midst of his
distresses? How perfect in its way is the final newspaper account of
the public dinner in Australia given in his honor!
Mr. Peggotty’s search through the world for Little Em’ly seems to me
now greatly overstrained, though I did not think so when I first read
it. There is a very true touch in the description of the old Mrs.
Gummidge, who had always been querulous and complaining until great
sorrow fell upon the household, when she became at once helpful,
considerate, and cheerful in comforting the distress of others. We have
all seen examples of this kind of transformation.
Dickens has done mankind a service by portraying the dignity of
simple things and the delicacy and nobility of character that often
lie beneath a rough exterior, among those whom Lincoln used to call
“the plain people,” of whom Lincoln was himself perhaps the most
illustrious type. What could be nobler and in its essential character
more gentlemanly than the behavior of Mr. Peggotty and Ham after
the betrayal of Little Em’ly; what more delicate than Peggotty’s
appreciation of Em’ly’s feeling toward him?
“‘She would go to the world’s furdest end if she could once see
me again, and she would fly to the world’s furdest end to keep
from seeing me. For tho’ she ain’t no call to doubt my love--and
doen’t--and doen’t--but there’s shame steps in and keeps betwixt
us.’”
Dickens’s style is often intensely vivid--for instance, in his
description of a London fog in “Bleak House”; of the burning Marseilles
sun in “Little Dorrit”; of the storm and shipwreck in “David
Copperfield”;--all fine instances of word-painting. Yet the crudities
are many and glaring, there is very little finish, and sometimes the
diction is commonplace.
But there are occasional passages of extraordinary beauty, due possibly
not so much to the style as the sentiment and the things described.
Witness the following, where David describes his feelings when he had
taken refuge with his aunt in her cottage at Dover, after his escape
from Murdstone and Grinby’s:
“The room was a pleasant one, at the top of the house,
overlooking the sea, on which the moon was shining brilliantly.
After I had said my prayers, and my candle had burnt out, I
remember how I still sat looking at the moonlight on the water,
as if I could hope to read my fortunes in it, as in a bright
book; or to see my mother with her child, coming from Heaven
along that shining path, to look upon me as she had looked when I
last saw her sweet face. I remember how the solemn feeling with
which at length I turned my eyes away, yielded to the sensation
of gratitude and rest with which the sight of the white-curtained
bed--and how much more the lying softly down upon it, nestling in
the snow-white sheets--inspired. I remember how I thought of all
the solitary places under the night sky where I had slept, and
how I prayed that I never might be houseless any more, and never
might forget the houseless. I remember how I seemed to float,
then, down the melancholy glory of that track upon the sea, away
into the world of dreams.”
“David Copperfield” may not be the supreme work of fiction which
some of us once fancied it, but it touches the heart very closely. It
dignifies humble life and common things, makes us better friends with
the world, and awakens those human traits which work for kindness and
goodwill toward all mankind.
THE SCARLET LETTER
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
Most persons of culture, if asked who was the foremost American writer
of fiction would undoubtedly answer, “Nathaniel Hawthorne.” Among his
works “The Scarlet Letter” is, I think, the most generally read and
widely known. This high estimate of Hawthorne is in most respects well
deserved. His works have a fine literary and poetic quality. The style
is faultless; the dramatic situations are admirably conceived; and the
structure of the plot, while simple, is extremely artistic. Hawthorne
generally deals with the darker phases of human life, with scenes
of wickedness and crime. His description of the emotions awakened
by criminal acts is extremely powerful. And yet it seems to me, in
reading his pages, that Hawthorne had little knowledge of what were the
actual motives and feelings of the guilty, and that his account of the
development of passions and character came rather from reflection and
abstract reasoning than from acute observation.