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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: A Psychological Counter-current in Recent Fiction + +Author: William Dean Howells + +Posting Date: July 23, 2008 [EBook #726] +Release Date: November, 1996 +Last Updated: August 26, 2018 + + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PSYCHOLOGICAL COUNTER-CURRENT *** + + + + +Etext produced by Anthony J. Adam. + +HTML file produced by David Widger + + + + + + +</pre> + <div style="height: 8em;"> + <br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <hr /> + <h1> + A PSYCHOLOGICAL COUNTER-CURRENT IN RECENT FICTION. + </h1> + <h2> + By William Dean Howells + </h2> + <div style="height: 8em;"> + <br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h3> + <a href="#link2H_FOOT"> Footnotes </a> + </h3> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <p> + It is consoling as often as dismaying to find in what seems a cataclysmal + tide of a certain direction a strong drift to the opposite quarter. It is + so divinable, if not so perceptible, that its presence may usually be + recognized as a beginning of the turn in every tide which is sure, sooner + or later, to come. In reform, it is the menace of reaction; in reaction, + it is the promise of reform; we may take heart as we must lose heart from + it. A few years ago, when a movement which carried fiction to the highest + place in literature was apparently of such onward and upward sweep that + there could be no return or descent, there was a counter-current in it + which stayed it at last, and pulled it back to that lamentable level where + fiction is now sunk, and the word "novel" is again the synonym of all that + is morally false and mentally despicable. Yet that this, too, is partly + apparent, I think can be shown from some phases of actual fiction which + happen to be its very latest phases, and which are of a significance as + hopeful as it is interesting. Quite as surely as romanticism lurked at the + heart of realism, something that we may call "psychologism" has been + present in the romanticism of the last four or five years, and has now + begun to evolve itself in examples which it is the pleasure as well as the + duty of criticism to deal with. + </p> + <h3> + I. + </h3> + <p> + No one in his day has done more to popularize the romanticism, now + decadent, than Mr. Gilbert Parker; and he made way for it at its worst + just because he was so much better than it was at its worst, because he + was a poet of undeniable quality, and because he could bring to its + intellectual squalor the graces and the powers which charm, though they + could not avail to save it from final contempt. He saves himself in his + latest novel, because, though still so largely romanticistic, its + prevalent effect is psychologistic, which is the finer analogue of + realistic, and which gave realism whatever was vital in it, as now it + gives romanticism whatever will survive it. In "The Right of Way" Mr. + Parker is not in a world where mere determinism rules, where there is + nothing but the happening of things, and where this one or that one is + important or unimportant according as things are happening to him or not, + but has in himself no claim upon the reader's attention. Once more the + novel begins to rise to its higher function, and to teach that men are + somehow masters of their fate. His Charley Steele is, indeed, as + unpromising material for the experiment, in certain ways, as could well be + chosen. One of the few memorable things that Bulwer said, who said so many + quotable things, was that pure intellectuality is the devil, and on his + plane Charley Steele comes near being pure intellectual. He apprehends all + things from the mind, and does the effects even of goodness from the pride + of mental strength. Add to these conditions of his personality that + pathologically he is from time to time a drunkard, with always the danger + of remaining a drunkard, and you have a figure of which so much may be + despaired that it might almost be called hopeless. I confess that in the + beginning this brilliant, pitiless lawyer, this consciencelessly powerful + advocate, at once mocker and poseur, all but failed to interest me. A + little of him and his monocle went such a great way with me that I thought + I had enough of him by the end of the trial, where he gets off a man + charged with murder, and then cruelly snubs the homicide in his gratitude; + and I do not quite know how I kept on to the point where Steele in his + drunkenness first dazzles and then insults the gang of drunken lumbermen, + and begins his second life in the river where they have thrown him, and + where his former client finds him. From that point I could not forsake him + to the end, though I found myself more than once in the world where things + happen of themselves and do not happen from the temperaments of its + inhabitants. In a better and wiser world, the homicide would not perhaps + be at hand so opportunely to save the life of the advocate who had saved + his; but one consents to this, as one consents to a great deal besides in + the story, which is imaginably the survival of a former method. The + artist's affair is to report the appearance, the effect; and in the real + world, the appearance, the effect, is that of law and not of miracle. + Nature employs the miracle so very sparingly that most of us go through + life without seeing one, and some of us contract such a prejudice against + miracles that when they are performed for us we suspect a trick. When I + suffered from this suspicion in "The Right of Way" I was the more vexed + because I felt that I was in the hands of a connoisseur of character who + had no need of miracles. + </p> + <p> + I have liked Mr. Parker's treatment of French-Canadian life, as far as I + have known it; and in this novel it is one of the principal pleasures for + me. He may not have his habitant, his seigneur or his cure down cold, but + he makes me believe that he has, and I can ask no more than that of him. + In like manner, he makes the ambient, physical as well as social, sensible + around me: the cold rivers, the hard, clear skies, the snowy woods and + fields, the little frozen villages of Canada. In this book, which is + historical of the present rather than the past, he gives one a realizing + sense of the Canadians, not only in the country but in the city, at least + so far as they affect each other psychologically in society, and makes one + feel their interesting temperamental difference from Americans. His + Montrealers are still Englishmen in their strenuous individuality; but in + the frank expression of character, of eccentricity, Charley Steele is like + a type of lawyer in our West, of an epoch when people were not yet content + to witness ideals of themselves, but when they wished to be their poetry + rather than to read it. In his second life he has the charm for the + imagination that a disembodied spirit might have, if it could be made + known to us in the circumstances of another world. He has, indeed, made + almost as clean a break with his past as if he had really been drowned in + the river. When, after the term of oblivion, in which he knows nothing of + his past self, he is restored to his identity by a famous surgeon too + opportunely out of Paris, on a visit to his brother, the cure, the problem + is how he shall expiate the errors of his past, work out his redemption in + his new life; and the author solves it for him by appointing him to a life + of unselfish labor, illumined by actions of positive beneficence. It is + something like the solution which Goethe imagines for Faust, and perhaps + no other is imaginable. In contriving it, Mr. Parker indulges the weaker + brethren with an abundance of accident and a luxury of catastrophe, which + the reader interested in the psychology of the story may take as little + account of as he likes. Without so much of them he might have made a + sculpturesque romance as clearly and nobly definite as "The Scarlet + Letter"; with them he has made a most picturesque romantic novel. His + work, as I began by saying, or hinting, is the work of a poet, in + conception, and I wish that in some details of diction it were as elect as + the author's verse is. But one must not expect everything; and in what it + is, "The Right of Way" satisfies a reasonable demand on the side of + literature, while it more than meets a reasonable expectation on the side + of psychological interest. Distinctly it marks an epoch in contemporary + noveling, and mounts far above the average best toward the day of better + things which I hope it is not rash to image dawning. + </p> + <h3> + II. + </h3> + <p> + I am sure I do not merely fancy the auroral light in a group of stories by + another poet. "The Ruling Passion," Dr. Henry Van Dyke calls his book, + which relates itself by a double tie to Mr. Parker's novel through kinship + of Canadian landscape and character, and through the prevalence of + psychologism over determinism in it. In the situations and incidents + studied with sentiment that saves itself from sentimentality sometimes + with greater and sometimes with less ease, but saves itself, the appeal is + from the soul in the character to the soul in the reader, and not from + brute event to his sensation. I believe that I like best among these + charming things the two sketches—they are hardly stories—"A + Year of Nobility" and "The Keeper of the Dight," though if I were asked to + say why, I should be puzzled. Perhaps it is because I find in the two + pieces named a greater detachment than I find in some others of Dr. Van + Dyke's delightful volume, and greater evidence that he has himself so + thoroughly and finally mastered his material that he is no longer in + danger of being unduly affected by it. That is a danger which in his very + quality of lyrical poet he is most liable to, for he is above all a + lyrical poet, and such drama as the chorus usually comments is the drama + next his heart. The pieces, in fact, are so many idyls, and their realism + is an effect which he has felt rather than reasoned his way to. It is + implicational rather than intentional. It is none the worse but all the + better on that account, and I cannot say that the psychologism is the + worse for being frankly, however uninsistently, moralized. A humor, + delicate and genuine as the poetry of the stories, plays through them, and + the milde macht of sympathy with everything human transfers to the + pleasant pages the foresters and fishermen from their native woods and + waters. Canada seems the home of primitive character; the seventeenth + century survives there among the habitants, with their steadfast faith, + their picturesque superstitions, their old world traditions and their new + world customs. It is the land not only of the habitant, but of his + oversoul, the good cure, and his overlord the seigneur, now faded + economically, but still lingering socially in the scene of his large + possessions. Their personality imparts a charm to the many books about + them which at present there seems to be no end to the making of; and such + a fine touch as Dr. Van Dyke's gives us a likeness of them, which if it is + idealized is idealized by reservation, not by attribution. + </p> + <h3> + III. + </h3> + <p> + Mr. William Allen White's method is the reverse of Dr. Van Dyke's. If he + has held his hand anywhere the reader does not suspect it, for it seems, + with its relentless power of realization, to be laid upon the whole + political life of Kansas, which it keeps in a clutch so penetrating, so + comprehensive, that the reader does not quite feel his own vitals free + from it. Very likely, it does not grasp the whole situation; after all, it + is a picture, not a map, that Mr. White has been making, and the + photograph itself, though it may include, does not represent everything. + Some years ago there was a silly attempt to reproach the true painters of + manners by calling them photographic, but I doubt if even then Mr. White + would have minded any such censure of his conscientious work, and I am + sure that now he would count it honor. He cannot be the admirable artist + he is without knowing that it is the inwardness as well as the outwardness + of men that he photographs, and if the reader does not know it, the worse + for the reader. He is not the sort of reader who will rise from this book + humiliated and fortified, as any reader worthy of it will. + </p> + <p> + The author has put his best foot forward in the opening story, "The Man on + Horseback," which, when I read it a few years ago in the magazine where it + first appeared, seemed to me so perfect in its way that I should not have + known how to better it. Of course, this is a good deal for a critic to + say; it is something like abdicating his office; but I repeat it. It takes + rather more courage for a man to be honest in fiction than out of it, for + people do not much expect it of him, or altogether like it in him; but in + "The Man on Horseback" Mr. White is at every moment honest. He is honest, + if not so impressively honest, in the other stories, "A Victory for the + People," "A Triumph's Evidence," "The Mercy of Death," and "A Most + Lamentable Comedy;" and where he fails of perfect justice to his material, + I think it is because of his unconscious political bias, rather than + anything wilfuller. In the story last named this betrays itself in his + treatment of a type of man who could not be faithful to any sort of + movement, and whose unfaithfulness does not necessarily censure the + movement Mr. White dislikes. Wonderfully good as the portrait of Dan Gregg + is, it wants the final touch which could have come only from a little + kindness. His story might have been called "The Man on Foot," by the sort + of antithesis which I should not blame Mr. White for scorning, and I + should not say anything of it worse than that it is pitilessly hard, which + the story of "The Man on Horseback" is not, or any of the other stories. + Sentimentality of any kind is alien to the author's nature, but not + tenderness, especially that sparing sort which gives his life to the man + who is down. + </p> + <p> + Most of the men whom Mr. White deals with are down, as most men in the + struggle of life are. Few of us can be on top morally, almost as few as + can be on top materially; and probably nothing will more surprise the + saints at the judgment day than to find themselves in such a small + minority. But probably not the saints alone will be saved, and it is some + such hope that Mr. White has constantly in mind when making his constant + appeal to conscience. It is, of course, a dramatic, not a didactic appeal. + He preaches so little and is so effectively reticent that I could almost + with he had left out the preface of his book, good as it is. Yes, just + because it is so good I could wish he had left it out. It is a perfect + justification of his purpose and methods, but they are their own + justification with all who can think about them, and the others are + themselves not worth thinking about. The stories are so bravely faithful + to human nature in that political aspect which is but one phase of our + whole average life that they are magnificently above all need of excusing + or defending. They form a substantial body of political fiction, such as + we have so long sighed for, and such as some of us will still go on + sighing for quite as if it had not been supplied. Some others will be + aware that it has been supplied in a form as artistically fine as the + material itself is coarse and common, if indeed any sort of humanity is + coarse and common except to those who themselves are so. + </p> + <p> + The meaning that animates the stories is that our political opportunity is + trammelled only so far as we have trammelled it by our greed and + falsehood; and in this aspect the psychology of Mr. White offers the + strongest contrast to that of the latest Russian master in fiction. Maxim + Gorky's wholly hopeless study of degeneracy in the life of "Foma + Gordyeeff" accuses conditions which we can only imagine with difficulty. + As one advances through the moral waste of that strange book one slowly + perceives that he is in a land of No Use, in an ambient of such iron + fixity and inexorable bounds that perhaps Foma's willingness to rot + through vice into imbecility is as wise as anything else there. It is a + book that saturates the soul with despair, and blights it with the + negation which seems the only possible truth in the circumstances; so that + one questions whether the Russian in which Turgenieff and Tolstoy, and + even Dostoyevsky, could animate the volition and the expectation of better + things has not sunk to depths beyond any counsel of amelioration. To come + up out of that Bottomless Pit into the measureless air of Mr. White's + Kansas plains is like waking from death to life. We are still among + dreadfully fallible human beings, but we are no longer among the damned; + with the worst there is a purgatorial possibility of Paradise. Even the + perdition of Dan Gregg then seems not the worst that could befall him; he + might again have been governor. + </p> + <h3> + IV. + </h3> + <p> + If the human beings in Dr. Weir Mitchell's very interesting novel of + "Circumstance" do not seem so human as those Russians of Gorky and those + Kansans of Mr. White, it is because people in society are always human + with difficulty, and his Philadelphians are mostly in society. They are + almost reproachfully exemplary, in some instances; and it is when they + give way to the natural man, and especially the natural woman, that they + are consoling and edifying. When Mary Fairthorne begins to scold her + cousin, Kitty Morrow, at the party where she finds Kitty wearing her dead + mother's pearls, and even takes hold of her in a way that makes the reader + hope she is going to shake her, she is delightful; and when Kitty + complains that Mary has "pinched" her, she is adorable. One is really in + love with her for the moment; and in that moment of nature the thick air + of good society seems to blow away and let one breathe freely. The bad + people in the book are better than the good people, and the good people + are best in their worst tempers. They are so exclusively well born and + well bred that the fitness of the medical student, Blount, for their + society can be ascertained only by his reference to a New England ancestry + of the high antiquity that can excuse even dubious cuffs and finger-nails + in a descendant of good principles and generous instincts. + </p> + <p> + The psychological problem studied in the book with such artistic fineness + and scientific thoroughness is personally a certain Mrs. Hunter, who + manages through the weak-minded and selfish Kitty Morrow to work her way + to authority in the household of Kitty's uncle, where she displaces Mary + Fairthorne, and makes the place odious to all the kith and kin of Kitty. + Intellectually, she is a clever woman, or rather, she is a woman of great + cunning that rises at times to sagacity; but she is limited by a bad heart + and an absence of conscience. She is bold up to a point, and then she is + timid; she will go to lengths, but not to all lengths; and when it comes + to poisoning Fairthorne to keep him from changing his mind about the + bequest he has made her, she has not quite the courage of her convictions. + She hesitates and does not do it, and it is in this point she becomes so + aesthetically successful. The guilt of the uncommitted crimes is more + important than the guilt of those which have been committed; and the + author does a good thing morally as well as artistically in leaving Mrs. + Hunter still something of a problem to his reader. In most things she is + almost too plain a case; she is sly, and vulgar, and depraved and cruel; + she is all that a murderess should be; but, in hesitating at murder, she + becomes and remains a mystery, and the reader does not get rid of her as + he would if she had really done the deed. In the inferior exigencies she + strikes fearlessly; and when the man who has divorced her looms up in her + horizon with doom in his presence, she goes and makes love to him. She is + not the less successful because she disgusts him; he agrees to let her + alone so long as she does no mischief; she has, at least, made him + unwilling to feel himself her persecutor, and that is enough for her. + </p> + <p> + Mrs. Hunter is a study of extreme interest in degeneracy, but I am not + sure that Kitty Morrow is not a rarer contribution to knowledge. Of + course, that sort of selfish girl has always been known, but she has not + met the open recognition which constitutes knowledge, and so she has the + preciousness of a find. She is at once tiresome and vivacious; she is + cold-hearted but not cold-blooded, and when she lets herself go in an + outburst of passion for the celibate young ritualist, Knellwood, she + becomes fascinating. She does not let herself go without having assured + herself that he loves her, and somehow one is not shocked at her making + love to him; one even wishes that she had won him. I am not sure but the + case would have been a little truer if she had won him, but as it is I am + richly content with it. Perhaps I am the more content because in the case + of Kitty Morrow I find a concession to reality more entire than the case + of Mrs. Hunter. She is of the heredity from which you would expect her + depravity; but Kitty Morrow, who lets herself go so recklessly, is, for + all one knows, as well born and as well bred as those other + Philadelphians. In my admiration of her, as a work of art, however, I must + not fail of justice to the higher beauty of Mary Fairthorne's character. + She is really a good girl, and saved from the unreality which always + threatens goodness in fiction by those limitations of temper which I have + already hinted. + </p> + <h3> + V. + </h3> + <p> + It is far from the ambient of any of these imaginary lives to that of the + half-caste heroine of "A Japanese Nightingale" and the young American whom + she marries in one of those marriages which neither the Oriental nor the + Occidental expects to last till death parts them. It is far, and all is + very strange under that remote sky; but what is true to humanity anywhere + is true everywhere; and the story of Yuki and Bigelow, as the Japanese + author tells it in very choice English, is of as palpitant actuality as + any which should treat of lovers next door. If I have ever read any record + of young married love that was so frank, so sweet, so pure, I do not + remember it. Yet, Yuki, though she loves Bigelow, does not marry him + because she loves him, but because she wishes with the money he gives her + to help her brother through college in America. When this brother comes + back to Japan—he is the touch of melodrama in the pretty idyl—he + is maddened by an acquired Occidental sense of his sister's disgrace in + her marriage, and falls into a fever and dies out of the story, which + closes with the lasting happiness of the young wife and husband. There is + enough incident, but of the kind that is characterized and does not + characterize. The charm, the delight, the supreme interest is in the + personality of Yuki. Her father was an Englishman who had married her + mother in the same sort of marriage she makes herself; but he is true to + his wife till he dies, and possibly something of the English constancy + which is not always so evident as in his case qualifies the daughter's + nature. Her mother was, of course, constant, and Yuki, though an outcast + from her own people—the conventions seen to be as imperative in + Tokyo as in Philadelphia—because of her half-caste origin, is justly + Japanese in what makes her loveliest. There is a quite indescribable + freshness in the art of this pretty novelette—it is hardly of the + dimensions of a novel—which is like no other art except in the + simplicity which is native to the best art everywhere. Yuki herself is of + a surpassing lovableness. Nothing but the irresistible charm of the + American girl could, I should think keep the young men who read Mrs. + Watana's book from going out and marrying Japanese girls. They are safe + from this, however, for the reason suggested, and therefore it can be + safely commended at least to young men intending fiction, as such a lesson + in the art of imitating nature as has not come under my hand for a long + while. It has its little defects, but its directness, and sincerity, and + its felicity through the sparing touch make me unwilling to note them. In + fact, I have forgotten them. + </p> + <h3> + VI. + </h3> + <p> + I wish that I could at all times praise as much the literature of an + author who speaks for another colored race, not so far from us as the + Japanese, but of as much claim upon our conscience, if not our interest. + Mr. Chesnutt, it seems to me, has lost literary quality in acquiring + literary quantity, and though his book, "The Marrow of Tradition," is of + the same strong material as his earlier books, it is less simple + throughout, and therefore less excellent in manner. At his worst, he is no + worse than the higher average of the ordinary novelist, but he ought + always to be very much better, for he began better, and he is of that race + which has, first of all, to get rid of the cakewalk, if it will not suffer + from a smile far more blighting than any frown. He is fighting a battle, + and it is not for him to pick up the cheap graces and poses of the + jouster. He does, indeed, cast them all from him when he gets down to his + work, and in the dramatic climaxes and closes of his story he shortens his + weapons and deals his blows so absolutely without flourish that I have + nothing but admiration for him. "The Marrow of Tradition," like everything + else he has written, has to do with the relations of the blacks and + whites, and in that republic of letters where all men are free and equal + he stands up for his own people with a courage which has more justice than + mercy in it. The book is, in fact, bitter, bitter. There is no reason in + history why it should not be so, if wrong is to be repaid with hate, and + yet it would be better if it was not so bitter. I am not saying that he is + so inartistic as to play the advocate; whatever his minor foibles may be, + he is an artist whom his stepbrother Americans may well be proud of; but + while he recognizes pretty well all the facts in the case, he is too + clearly of a judgment that is made up. One cannot blame him for that; what + would one be one's self? If the tables could once be turned, and it could + be that it was the black race which violently and lastingly triumphed in + the bloody revolution at Wilmington, North Carolina, a few years ago, what + would not we excuse to the white man who made the atrocity the argument of + his fiction? + </p> + <p> + Mr. Chesnutt goes far back of the historic event in his novel, and shows + us the sources of the cataclysm which swept away a legal government and + perpetuated an insurrection, but he does not paint the blacks all good, or + the whites all bad. He paints them as slavery made them on both sides, and + if in the very end he gives the moral victory to the blacks—if he + suffers the daughter of the black wife to have pity on her father's + daughter by his white wife, and while her own child lies dead from a shot + fired in the revolt, gives her husband's skill to save the life of her + sister's child—it cannot be said that either his aesthetics or + ethics are false. Those who would question either must allow, at least, + that the negroes have had the greater practice in forgiveness, and that + there are many probabilities to favor his interpretation of the fact. No + one who reads the book can deny that the case is presented with great + power, or fail to recognize in the writer a portent of the sort of negro + equality against which no series of hangings and burnings will finally + avail. + </p> + <h3> + VII. + </h3> + <p> + In Mr. Chesnutt's novel the psychologism is of that universal implication + which will distinguish itself to the observer from the psychologism of + that more personal sort—the words are not as apt as I should like—evident + in some of the interesting books under notice here. I have tried to say + that it is none the less a work of art for that reason, and I can praise + the art of another novel, in which the same sort of psychologism prevails, + though I must confess it a fiction of the rankest tendenciousness. "Lay + Down Your Arms" is the name of the English version of the Baroness von + Suttner's story, "Die Waffen Nieder," which has become a watchword with + the peacemakers on the continent of Europe. Its success there has been + very great, and I wish its success on the continent of America could be so + great that it might replace in the hands of our millions the baleful books + which have lately been glorifying bloodshed in the private and public wars + of the past, if not present. The wars which "Lay Down Your Arms" deals + with are not quite immediate, and yet they are not so far off + historically, either. They are the Franco-Austrian war of 1859, the + Austro-Prussian war of 1866, and the Franco-German war of 1870; and the + heroine whose personal relation makes them live so cruelly again is a + young Austrian lady of high birth. She is the daughter and the sister of + soldiers, and when the handsome young officer, of equal rank with her own, + whom she first marries, makes love to her just before the outbreak of the + war first named, she is as much in love with his soldiership as with + himself. But when the call to arms comes, it strikes to her heart such a + sense of war as she has never known before. He is killed in one of the + battles of Italy, and after a time she marries another soldier, not such a + beau sabreur as the first, but a mature and thoughtful man, who fights + through that second war from a sense of duty rather than from love of + fighting, and comes out of it with such abhorrence that he quits the army + and goes with his family to live in Paris. There the third war overtakes + him, and in the siege, this Austrian, who has fought the Prussians to the + death, is arrested by the communards as a Prussian spy and shot. + </p> + <p> + The bare outline of the story gives, of course, no just notion of the + intense passion of grief which fills it. Neither does it convey a due + impression of the character in the different persons which, amidst the + heartbreak, is ascertained with some such truth and impartiality as + pervade the effects of "War and Peace." I do not rank it with that work, + but in its sincerity and veracity it easily ranks above any other novel + treating of war which I know, and it ought to do for the German peoples + what the novels of Erckmann-Chatrian did for the French, in at least one + generation. Will it do anything for the Anglo-Saxon peoples? Probably not + till we have pacified the Philippines and South Africa. We Americans are + still apparently in love with fighting, though the English are apparently + not so much so; and as it is always well to face the facts, I will + transfer to my page some facts of fighting from this graphic book, which + the read may apply to the actualities in the Philippines, with a little + imagination. They are taken from a letter written to the heroine by her + second husband after one of the Austrian defeats. "The people poured + boiling water and oil on the Prussians from the windows of the houses at + ——.... The village is ours—no, it is the enemy's, now + ours again—and yet once more the enemy's; but it is no longer a + village, but a smoking mass of ruins of houses....One family has remained + behind...an old married couple and their daughter, the latter in childbed. + The husband is serving in our regiment.... Poor devil! he got there just + in time to see the mother and child die; a shell had exploded under their + bed.... I saw a breastwork there which was formed of corpses. The + defenders had heaped all the slain who were lying near, in order, from + that rampart, to fire over at their assailants. I shall surely never + forget that wall in my life. A man who formed one of its bricks was still + alive, and was waving his arm.... What is happening there? The execution + party is drawn out. Has a spy been caught? Seventeen this time. There they + come, in four ranks, each one of four men, surrounded by a square of + soldiers. The condemned men step out, with their heads down. Behind comes + a cart with a corpse in it, and bound to the corpse the dead man's son, a + boy of twelve, also condemned.... Steep, rocky heights; Jaegers, nimble as + cats, climbing up them.... Some of them, who are hit by the enemy's shot, + suddenly stretch out both their arms, let their muskets fall, and, with + their heads falling backwards, drop off the height, step by step, from one + rocky point to another, smashing their limbs to pieces. I saw a horseman + at some distance, obliquely behind me, at whose side a shell burst. His + horse swerved aside and came against the tail of mind, then shot past me. + The man sat still in the saddle, but a fragment of the shell had ripped + his belly open and torn out all the intestines. The upper part of his body + was held to the lower only by the spine. From the ribs to the thighs + nothing but one great, bleeding cavity. A short distance farther he fell + to the ground, one foot still clinging in the stirrup, and the galloping + horse dragging him on over the stony soil.... Another street fight in the + little town of Saar.... In the middle of the square stands a high pillar + of the Virgin. The mother of God holds her child in one arm, and stretches + the other out in blessing.... Here the fight was prolonged, man to man. + They were hacking at me, I laying about me on all sides.... A Prussian + dragoon, strong as Goliath, tore one of our officers (a pretty, dandified + lieutenant—how many girls are, perhaps, mad after him?) out of his + saddle and split his skull at the feet of the Virgin's pillar. The gentle + saint looked on unmoved. Another of the enemy's dragoons—a Goliath, + too—seized, just before me almost, my right-hand man, and bent him + backwards in his saddle so powerfully that he broke his back—I + myself heard it crack. To this the Madonna gave her blessing also." + </p> + <h3> + VIII. + </h3> + <p> + It can be said that these incidents of battle are imagined, like the facts + of Vereschagin's pictures, but like these they are imagined rather below + than above the real horror of war, and represent them inadequately. The + incidents of another book, the last on my list, are of the warfare which + goes on in times of peace, and which will go on as long as there are human + passions, and mankind are divided into men and women, and saints and + sinners. Of all the books on my list, "Let Not Man Put Asunder" is, + narrowing the word to the recognition of the author's intellectual + alertness and vividness, the cleverest. The story is of people who + constantly talk so wonderfully well beyond the wont even of society people + that the utmost skill of the author, who cannot subdue their brilliancy, + is needed to make us feel their reality. But he does make us feel this in + most cases, the important cases, and in the other cases his power of + interesting us is so great that we do not stop to examine the grounds of + our sensation, or to question the validity of our emotions. The action, + which is positively of to-day, or yesterday at the furthest, passes in + Boston and England, among people of such great fortune and high rank and + transcendent fashion that the proudest reader cannot complain of their + social quality. As to their moral quality, one might have thought the less + said the better, if the author had not said so much that is pertinent and + impressive. It is from first to last a book with a conscience in it, and + its highest appeal is to the conscience. It is so very nearly a great + book, so very nearly a true book, that it is with a kind of grief one + recognizes its limitations, a kind of surprise at its shortcomings, which, + nevertheless, are not shortcomings that impair its supreme effect. This, I + take it, is the intimation of a mystical authority in marriage against + which divorce sins in vain, which no recreancy can subvert, and by virtue + of which it claims eternally its own the lovers united in it; though they + seem to become haters, it cannot release them to happiness in a new union + through any human law. + </p> + <p> + If the author had done dramatically (and his doing is mainly dramatic) no + more than this, he would have established his right to be taken seriously, + but he has done very much more, and has made us acquainted with types and + characters which we do not readily forget, and with characters much more + real than their ambient. For instance, the Old Cambridge in which the + Vassalls live is not the Old Cambridge of fact, but the Vassalls are the + Vassalls of fact, though the ancestral halls in which they dwell are of a + baroniality difficult of verification. Their honor, their righteousness, + their purity are veracious, though their social state is magnified beyond + any post-revolutionary experience. The social Boston of the novel is more + like; its difference from an older Boston is sensitively felt, and finely + suggested, especially on the side of that greater lawlessness in which it + is not the greater Boston. Petrina Faneuil, the heroine, is derivatively + of the older Boston which has passed away, and actually of the newer + Boston which will not be so much regretted when it passes, the fast + Boston, the almost rowdy Boston, the decadent Boston. It is, of course, a + Boston much worse in the report than in the fact, but it is not + unimaginably bad to the student who notes that the lapse from any high + ideals is to a level lower than that of people who have never had them. As + for Petrina herself, who was in Boston more than of it, she is so + admirably analyzed in the chapter devoted to the task that I am tempted to + instance it as the best piece of work in the book, though it does not make + one hold one's breath like some of the dramatic episodes: "Whatever + religious instinct had been in the family had spent itself at least two + generations before her time. She was a pagan—a tolerant, + indifferent, slightly scornful pagan.... But she was none the less a + Puritan. Certain of her ways of thought and habits of life, had survived + the beliefs which had given them birth, as an effect will often outlive + its cause. If she was a pagan, she was a serious one, a pagan with a New + England conscience." + </p> + <p> + This is mighty well said, and the like things that are said of Petrina's + sister-in-law, who has married an English title, are mighty well, too. + "She had inherited a countenance whose expression was like the light which + lingers in the sky long after sunset—the light of some ancestral + fire gone out. If in her face there were prayers, they had been said by + Pepperells and Vassalls now sleeping in Massachusetts churchyards. If in + her voice there were tears, they had been shed by those who would weep no + more. She mirrored the emotions she had never felt; and all that was left + of joys and sorrows and spiritual aspirations which had once thrilled + human hearts was in that plaintive echo they had given to this woman's + tone, and the light of petition they had left burning in her eyes." + </p> + <p> + No one who reads such passages can deny that the author of "Let Not Man + Put Asunder" can think subtly as well as say clearly, and the book abounds + in proofs of his ability to portray human nature in its lighter aspects. + Lady de Bohun, with her pathetic face, is a most amusing creature, with + all her tragedy, and she is on the whole the most perfectly characterized + personality in the story. The author gives you a real sense of her beauty, + her grace, her being always charmingly in a hurry and always late. The + greatest scene is hers: the scene in which she meets her divorced husband + with his second wife. One may suspect some of the other scenes, but one + must accept that scene as one of genuine dramatic worth. Too much of the + drama in the book is theatre rather than drama, and yet the author's gift + is essentially dramatic. He knows how to tell a story on his stage that + holds you to the fall of the curtain, and makes you almost patient of the + muted violins and the limelight of the closing scene. Such things, you + say, do not happen in Brookline, Mass., whatever happens in London or in + English country houses; and yet the people have at one time or other + convinced you of their verity. Of the things that are not natural, you + feel like saying that they are supernatural rather than unnatural, and you + own that at its worst the book is worth while in a time when most novels + are not worth while. + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2H_FOOT" id="link2H_FOOT"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Footnotes + </h2> + <p> + "The Right of Way." A Novel. By Gilbert Parker. Harper & Brothers. + </p> + <p> + "The Ruling Passion. Tales of nature and human nature." By Henry Van Dyke. + Charles Scribner's Sons. + </p> + <p> + "Spoils and Stratagems Stories of love and politics." By Wm. Allen White. + Charles Scribner's Sons. + </p> + <p> + "Foma Gordyeeff." By Maxim Gorky. Translated from the Russian by Isabel F. + Hapgood. Charles Scribner's Sons. + </p> + <p> + "Circumstances." By S. Weir Mitchell, M.D. The Century Company. + </p> + <p> + "A Japanese Nightingale." By Onoto Watana. Harper & Brothers. + </p> + <p> + "The Marrow of Tradition." By Charles W. Chesnutt. Houghton, Mifflin & + Co. + </p> + <p> + "Lay Down Your Arms. The autobiography of Martha von Tilling." By Bertha + von Suttner. Authorized Translation. By T. Holmes. Longmans, Green & + Co. + </p> + <p> + "Let Not Man Put Asunder." By Basil King. Harper & Brothers. + </p> + <div style="height: 6em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Psychological Counter-current in +Recent Fiction, by William Dean Howells + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PSYCHOLOGICAL COUNTER-CURRENT *** + +***** This file should be named 726-h.htm or 726-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/7/2/726/ + +Etext produced by Anthony J. 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