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@@ -0,0 +1,1071 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Psychological Counter-current in Recent +Fiction, by William Dean Howells + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. 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 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PSYCHOLOGICAL COUNTER-CURRENT *** + + + + +Produced by Anthony J. Adam. + + + + + + + + + +A PSYCHOLOGICAL COUNTER-CURRENT IN RECENT FICTION. + +by + +William Dean Howells + + + +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. + + + +I. + +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. + +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. + + + +II. + +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. + + + +III. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + +IV. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + +V. + +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. + + + +VI. + +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? + +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. + + + +VII. + +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. + +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." + + + +VIII. + +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. + +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." + +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." + +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. + + + +Footnotes + +"The Right of Way." A Novel. By Gilbert Parker. Harper & Brothers. + +"The Ruling Passion. Tales of nature and human nature." By Henry Van +Dyke. Charles Scribner's Sons. + +"Spoils and Stratagems Stories of love and politics." By Wm. Allen +White. Charles Scribner's Sons. + +"Foma Gordyeeff." By Maxim Gorky. Translated from the Russian by +Isabel F. Hapgood. Charles Scribner's Sons. + +"Circumstances." By S. Weir Mitchell, M.D. The Century Company. + +"A Japanese Nightingale." By Onoto Watana. Harper & Brothers. + +"The Marrow of Tradition." By Charles W. Chesnutt. Houghton, Mifflin +& Co. + +"Lay Down Your Arms. The autobiography of Martha von Tilling." By +Bertha von Suttner. Authorized Translation. By T. Holmes. Longmans, +Green & Co. + +"Let Not Man Put Asunder." By Basil King. Harper & Brothers. + + + + + + + + + +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.txt or 726.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/7/2/726/ + +Produced by Anthony J. Adam. + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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