Chapter IV: Part 4

“At the time the events happened which we undertake to recount,
this town, already of considerable importance, was also a place
of defense, and for that reason had the honor of lodging a
commander, and the advantage of possessing a fixed garrison of
Spanish soldiers, who taught modesty to the damsels and matrons
of the country; bestowed from time to time marks of their favor
on the shoulders of a husband or a father; and never failed, in
autumn, to disperse themselves in the vineyards, to thin the
grapes, and lighten for the peasant the labors of the vintage.”

There is a great deal of homely philosophy intermixed with this satire. For instance, the criticism of

“those prudent persons who shrink back with alarm from the
extreme of virtue as well as vice, are forever proclaiming that
perfection lies in the medium between the two, and fix that
medium exactly at the point which they have reached, and where
they find themselves very much at their ease.”

These delicate touches come in most appropriately, and, as it were, spontaneously from the context. They are never lugged in head foremost, for the evident purpose of saying a good thing.

The book abounds in apt similes; for instance, in the following description of Perpetua’s vain efforts to keep a secret:

“But certain it is that such a secret in the poor woman’s breast
was like very new wine in an old and badly-hooped cask, which
ferments, and bubbles, and boils, and if it does not send the
bung into the air, works itself about till it issues in froth,
and penetrates between the staves, and oozes out in drops here
and there, so that one can taste it, and almost decide what kind
of wine it is.”

When the bravoes, led by Griso, in the guise of a pilgrim, attempt to carry off Lucia from her home and are suddenly thrown into consternation by the pealing of the bell, the author tells us:

“It required all the authority of Griso to keep them together,
so that it might be a retreat and not a flight. Just as a dog
urging a drove of pigs, runs here and there after those that
break the ranks, seizes one by the ears, and drags him into the
herd, propels another with his nose, barks at a third that leaves
the line at the same moment, so the pilgrim laid hold of one of
his troop just passing the threshold, and drew him back, detained
with his staff others who had almost reached it, called after
some who were flying they knew not whither, and finally succeeded
in assembling them all in the middle of the courtyard.”

The characters are extremely well described. Perhaps the two lovers are the least striking of any in the book. Lucia is a simple peasant girl; Renzo, a rash, impulsive, kindly boy, easily led, a very natural, grown-up child such as Italy produces in greater luxuriance than colder and severer latitudes. There are no passionate love scenes in the book. The affection of the betrothed for each other seems rather an incident than the principal theme of the story. Don Ferrante, the husband of Donna Prassede, is a fine type of scholastic pedantry. The catalogue of his ridiculous acquirements in the absurd philosophy and learning of the time, with long lists of authors now unknown, reminds us of the studies of Don Quixote; Don Ferrante, too, is skilled in the science of chivalry, wherein he enjoyed the title of “Professor,” and “not only argued on it in a real, masterly manner, but, frequently requested to interfere in affairs of honor, always gave _some_ decision.”

The officiousness of Donna Prassede is well set forth in the following:

“It was well for Lucia that she was not the only one to whom
Donna Prassede had to do good.... Besides the rest of the
family, all of whom were persons more or less needing amendment
and guidance--besides all the other occasions which offered
themselves to her, or she contrived to find, of extending the
same kind offices, of her own free will, to many to whom she was
under no obligations; she had also five daughters, none of whom
were at home, but who gave her much more to think about than if
they had been. Three of these were nuns, two were married; hence
Donna Prassede naturally found herself with three monasteries,
and two houses to superintend; a vast and complicated
undertaking, and the more arduous, because two husbands, backed
by fathers, mothers, and brothers; three abbesses, supported
by other dignitaries, and by many nuns, would not accept her
superintendence. It was a complete warfare, _alias_ five
warfares, concealed, and even courteous, up to a certain point,
but ever active, ever vigilant. There was in every one of these
places a continued watchfulness to avoid her solicitude, to
close the door against her counsels, to elude her inquiries,
and to keep her in the dark, as far as possible, on every
undertaking. We do not mention the resistance, the difficulties
she encountered in the management of other still more extraneous
affairs; it is well known that one must generally do good to men
by force.”

The story, like some other of the greatest works of fiction--like Don Quixote, Les Misérables, nay, like Henry Esmond itself, is somewhat too prolix. The long historical citations, the extracts from the edicts and proclamations of the time, look as if the author considered it necessary to prove his story rather than to let it prove itself. That Renzo and Lucia should leave Father Cristoforo to die alone is, to my mind, the most serious blemish in the book; but in spite of these shortcomings, “The Betrothed” is entitled to one of the first places in the front rank of the masterpieces of fiction.

EUGENIE GRANDET
HONORÉ DE BALZAC

It is not quite fair to Balzac to judge him by any one of the stories in his encyclopædic “Comedie Humaine.” The countless varieties of life and character which he portrays show the author’s versatility and power, and have perhaps a value from their very number which can not be adequately treated when we consider only a single specimen of his work. Many of his characters, it is true, are grotesques; some are absolute deformities; others are hard to understand by any but a Frenchman,--French human nature, as it seems to me, being a little different from human nature elsewhere; but there is one great work of his which, although it is not without its morbid side, must appeal to the common consciousness of all mankind, and bring to every human heart the conviction of its spiritual truth. “Eugenie Grandet” is a novel of this universal kind of excellence.

The plot is a very simple one. M. Grandet is a miser who lives in an old comfortless house in Saumur with his wife, his daughter Eugenie, and big Nanon, the maid of all work. The Cruchots and the De Grassins are intriguing for the hand of the heiress, and on Eugenie’s birthday, when all these are assembled, a stranger unexpectedly appears, Charles Grandet, her cousin, committed to the care of his uncle by his father in Paris, who has become a bankrupt and has determined upon suicide. Charles, however, knows nothing of this, and is overcome with pitiful grief when he learns of his father’s death. Eugenie, a simple minded girl, falls in love with him, but the old miser, anxious to get rid of him, sends him to the Indies. Grandet’s tyranny over his wife and child is graphically portrayed. The poor wife succumbs to it and dies. It is not long till the miser follows her, and Eugenie is left alone with a colossal fortune for which she cares nothing, and with a lover from whom she has received no word. In the meantime Charles has acquired a fortune of his own, and on his return writes to her that he wishes to marry another. Her dream is over, the light of her life is extinguished; she gives her hand without her heart to Cruchot, and upon his death continues her hopeless life alone in the desolate home, administering her estate with economy, but devoting its proceeds to works of beneficence.

This is a story, the like of which has happened many a time in actual life, but the cold skeleton of the tale as given above conveys not the slightest idea of the warm flesh and blood with which it is invested. The description of the old street and the dreary house and its furniture is a literary jewel. The account of the way in which Grandet accumulates his fortune, and of the neighborhood rumors regarding his wealth, stirs our own acquisitiveness as we read it, and shows him to be a very natural and almost inevitable sort of miser. He is moreover a man of commanding ability, who extorts respect even though he inspires abhorrence. The details of his habits, his economies, and his schemes, as well as his personal appearance, are admirably given. Equally lifelike are the descriptions of big Nanon, the devoted house-servant, starved and overtasked, yet always grateful to the master who took her when none others would; of the wife, submissive, sensitive, magnanimous, and uncomplaining; and of Eugenie, a girl who has grown up in perfect innocence of the world, pure, beautiful, and of a generous and noble spirit. All these are the subjects of an odious domestic tyranny on the part of “Goodman Grandet,” the particulars of which are set forth with powerful fidelity.

Charles is a rather uninteresting young dandy, who comes arrayed for conquest. It is not unnatural that an artless girl like Eugenie should fall in love with him, and her devices to procure him such luxuries as a cake, a wax candle, and sugar for his coffee, add to the charm of their simple love-making. The sympathy of the two women in his sorrow contrasts sharply with the sordid calculations of the miser, and the scene where Eugenie learns his needs by furtively reading two of his letters (for even her good qualities are decidedly of the French type) and then brings him her little store of gold, and when he hesitates, begs him on her knees to take it--this scene is very effective, as is also her despairing cry, after he departs, “O mother, mother, if I had God’s power for one moment!”

But the more tragic parts of this simple drama are near its close,--the stormy scene when Grandet learns that Eugenie has given Charles her money, her imprisonment in a room of the old house, her mother’s illness and patient death, and, ghastliest of all, the last hours of the miser:

“So long as he could open his eyes, where the last sparks of
life seemed to linger, they used to turn at once to the door of
the room where all his treasures lay, and he would say to his
daughter, in tones that seemed to thrill with a panic of fear:

“‘Are they there still?’

“‘Yes, father.’

“‘Keep watch over the gold!... Let me see the gold.’

“Then Eugenie used to spread out the louis on a table before him,
and he would sit for whole hours with his eyes fixed on the louis
in an unseeing stare, like that of a child who begins to see for
the first time; and sometimes a weak infantine smile, painful to
see, would steal across his features.

“‘That warms me!’ he muttered more than once, and his face
expressed a perfect content.

“When the curé came to administer the sacrament, all the life
seemed to have died out of the miser’s eyes, but they lit up
for the first time for many hours at the sight of the silver
crucifix, the candlesticks, and holy water vessel, all of silver;
he fixed his gaze on the precious metal, and the wen on his face
twitched for the last time.

“As the priest held the gilded crucifix above him that the image
of Christ might be laid to his lips, he made a frightful effort
to clutch it--a last effort which cost him his life. He called
Eugenie, who saw nothing; she was kneeling beside him, bathing
in tears the hand that was growing cold already. ‘Give me your
blessing, father,’ she entreated. ‘Be very careful!’ the last
words came from him; ‘one day you will render an account to me
of everything here below.’ Which utterance clearly shows that a
miser should adopt Christianity as his religion.”

Then follows the long waiting of Eugenie; the dastardly letter sent by Charles after his return; the noble dignity with which she releases him and pays his father’s creditors to preserve the honor of one who is quite careless of it himself, and then resigns herself to her hopeless destiny.

“Eugenie Grandet” is a consummate work of art.

DEAD SOULS
NIKOLAI GOGOL

“Dead Souls,” the masterpiece of Gogol, is not very widely known among English readers, but it is entitled to a high rank in literature. Perhaps the fact that it is a torso has been one cause of this neglect, for before the second volume was finished the author was overtaken by that madness which clouded his last days. But the first volume is practically complete in itself. It records the efforts of the smug, shrewd, rascally Tchitschikoff to procure from various landowners certain paper transfers of the serfs who had died on their estates since the last enumeration in order to effect a fraudulent loan by means of a list corresponding with the official register. The description of the stranger, of his sudden arrival in a provincial city, of the various estates he visits and the remarkable people he encounters, and then, while his enterprise is prospering, of the sudden spreading of the scandal through the town and his forced flight to other regions--these things are told with a power of portraiture which is amazing. The characters he describes are sometimes grotesque, but they are faithful to the essentials of human nature; even the wild Nozdreff and the massive Sobakevitch are very real. Gogol has been called the Dickens of Russian literature, and his portraits, while fewer in number and variety, are less like puppets than many of those drawn by the English novelist. His description of Pliushkin the miser is quite as striking as that of L’Avare of Molière or Père Grandet of Balzac, while his account of the way the gossip regarding Tchitschikoff started and circulated is as fine as anything in “The School for Scandal.” He calls his book a “poem,” and although it is quite devoid of versification or lofty diction, yet if the word “poem” means a “work of original creative art,” “Dead Souls” will fully justify the name.

It has the same sort of masterly quality as “Don Quixote,” and transports us as completely to the scenes which it describes. His patriotic apostrophe to Russia in the final chapter, and his description of the swift flight of the hero in his troika, are picturesque and eloquent to the last degree.

THE THREE GUARDSMEN
ALEXANDRE DUMAS

Probably there is no better example of the novel of adventure than “The 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.

The book begins dramatically rather than historically--that is to say, in the very middle of the impressive story which it relates. Hester Prynne, the heroine, had married old Roger Chillingworth, a union unnatural and without affection, which was followed on her part, during her husband’s long and unexplained absence, by a guilty passion for Arthur Dimmesdale, the eloquent clergyman of a Puritan New England town. All the incidents connected with the growth and development of this passion, and with the birth of the child which followed it, are omitted from the narrative, which opens with a scene at the door of the prison, from which Hester comes forth to suffer the punishment prescribed for her crime,--to stand for a certain time in the scaffold by the pillory, and to wear for the rest of her life the scarlet letter A upon her breast. We have nothing to tell us how the temptation began, nor how it grew, nor the terrible anxieties which must have preceded the discovery of her wrongdoing. Possibly these things are the more impressive because left wholly to the imagination.

But among the multitude that gaze upon the unfortunate woman in the hours of her public exposure is a face that she knows only too well. Old Roger Chillingworth, who has been so long absent, and supposed even to be dead, appears and recognizes her. He visits her afterwards in prison, and exacts from her an oath that his identity shall remain unknown. The terrible punishment of the scarlet letter to a sensitive mind is powerfully portrayed; her shame at every new face that gazes upon it, and the consciousness of another sense, giving her a sympathetic knowledge of hidden sin in other hearts, a strange companionship in crime, upon which Hawthorne lays much stress in many of his works. Even little Pearl, her child, gives her no comfort, for the child’s character is wayward, elusive, elf-like. She is a strange creature, whose conversation brings to her mother constant reminders of her guilt. Hester, with great constancy, refuses to disclose the name of the child’s father, and Dimmesdale, the honored pastor of the community, is tortured by a remorse which constantly grows upon him. Old Chillingworth suspects him, becomes his physician, lives with him under the same roof, discovers a scarlet letter concealed upon his breast, and enjoys for years the exquisite revenge of digging into the hidden places of a sensitive human soul and gloating over the agonies thus unconsciously revealed to a bitter enemy. An account is given of Dimmesdale’s self-imposed penances, and of the concealed scourge for his own chastisement. One night he resolves to go forth and stand on the same scaffold where Hester has undergone her punishment. The bitterness of his emotions is finely drawn; the wild shriek which barely fails to rouse the citizens of the town; the passing of Hester on her way from her ministrations at a death-bed; the standing together of the three, father, mother, and child, upon the scaffold; the letter A which appears in the sky; Pearl’s keen questions; and the face of old Chillingworth, who has come forth to look on them.

Hester at last resolves to disclose to Dimmesdale the identity of his evil companion. Her character has grown stronger through openly bearing the burden of her guilt, while the poor clergyman’s soul has become shattered through his constant hypocrisy. She meets him in the forest, and in a scene of great natural tenderness and beauty tells him that Chillingworth is her husband. He reproaches her bitterly for her long concealment, then forgives her. She urges him to flee, as his only hope.

“‘Exchange this false life of thine for a true one. Be, if thy
spirit summon thee to such a mission, the teacher and apostle of
the red men. Or,--as is more thy nature,--be a scholar and a sage
among the wisest and the most renowned of the cultivated world.
Preach! Write! Act! Do anything, save to lie down and die! Give
up this name of Arthur Dimmesdale, and make thyself another, and
a high one, such as thou canst wear without fear or shame. Why
shouldst thou tarry so much as one other day in the torments that
have so gnawed into thy life!--that have made thee feeble to will
and to do!--that will leave thee powerless even to repent; Up,
and away!’

“‘O Hester!’ cried Arthur Dimmesdale, in whose eyes a fitful
light, kindled by her enthusiasm, flashed up and died away, ‘thou
tellest of running a race to a man whose knees are tottering
beneath him! I must die here! There is not the strength or
courage left me to venture into the wide, strange, difficult
world, alone!’

“It was the last expression of the despondency of a broken
spirit. He lacked energy to grasp the better fortune that seemed
within his reach.

“He repeated the word.

“‘Alone, Hester!’

“‘Thou shalt not go alone!’ answered she, in a deep whisper.

“Then, all was spoken!”

In connection with their proposed departure to Europe, the minister inquired of Hester the time at which the vessel would depart, and learned that it would probably be on the fourth day thereafter. “That is most fortunate!” the clergyman then said to himself. The reason why he considered it fortunate revealed a very subtle phase of human nature.

“It was because, on the third day from the present, he was to
preach the Election Sermon; and as such an occasion formed an
honorable epoch in the life of a New England clergyman, he
could not have chanced upon a more suitable mode and time of
terminating his professional career. ‘At least, they shall say
of me,’ thought this exemplary man, ‘that I leave no public duty
unperformed, nor ill performed.’”

And of this strange feeling the author remarks:

“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to
himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting
bewildered as to which may be the true one.”

Having resolved upon flight, however, and in the joy of his anticipated release from a dreadful life, a curious change comes over Mr. Dimmesdale, a revolution in his sphere of thought and feeling.

“At every step he was incited to do some strange, wild, wicked
thing or other, with a sense that it would be at once involuntary
and intentional; in spite of himself, yet growing out of a
profounder self than that which opposed the impulse.”

When he met one of his old deacons, it was only by the most careful self-control that he could refrain from certain blasphemous suggestions respecting the communion supper. When he met a pious and exemplary old dame, the eldest of his flock, whom he had often refreshed with warm, fragrant Gospel truths, he could now recall no text of Scripture, nor aught else, except a brief, pithy, and, as it then appeared to him, unanswerable argument against the immortality of the human soul. He was tempted to make certain evil suggestions to one of the young women of his flock, and to teach some very wicked words to a knot of little Puritan children. He had come back from the forest another man.

But when the hour of departure approaches, and amid the preparations for the great Election Sermon, Hester hears that Roger Chillingworth has learned of their intended flight and taken passage by the same ship!

The final climax is reached when Dimmesdale, after preaching his great sermon, which arouses the people to the highest pitch of enthusiasm, comes forth from the church, and recognizes Hester and Pearl. At his earnest entreaty she supports him to the scaffold, where he stands at her side, and, against the protestations of old Chillingworth, confesses his guilt, shows the scarlet letter upon his own breast, and expires. Chillingworth does not long survive him. Hester goes with Pearl across the sea, but after some years returns alone, again resumes the scarlet letter, and takes up her old life in her little cottage near the town.

The moral of the book, from the poor minister’s miserable experience, is put into this sentence: “Be true, be true, be true; show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred.” Hester’s strength in bearing her sorrow is contrasted powerfully with the growing weakness and degeneracy of Dimmesdale, and with the transformation of Chillingworth into a devil, through constant gratification of his revenge. The strange conduct of Pearl, who, with her child’s instinct, resents the conduct of the minister who will recognize her mother and herself only in secret, adds to the effect; yet it can not be said that Pearl is in the least a natural child. She seems almost as mature when she first asks her mother who it was that sent her into the world, and denies that she has a Heavenly Father, as she does in the last pages of the book. The appearance of Mistress Hibbins, the old witch, who was afterwards executed, throws a gleam of the supernatural across the pages.

It is a weird story, the product of a luxuriant though somewhat morbid imagination; but the novelist, on the other hand, lacks that acute perception, that knowledge of trifling circumstances, such as would have appeared in the pages of Balzac or Tolstoi--those suggestive details which unconsciously set forth men’s motives, feelings, and character better than any philosophical reflections.

HENRY ESMOND
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY

The equestrian painting by Velasquez of Prince Balthasar Charles, the original of which is in the Madrid Museum, is now well known throughout the world by means of photographs and other reproductions. It represents a very small boy on a very huge horse, which is in the act of rearing. The anatomy of the animal is impossible, and it is safe to say no boy as small as the Prince ever assumed under like circumstances the attitude attributed to him; and yet, in spite of its defects, this picture is a very remarkable and a very beautiful painting. We know in an instant that it is the work of a master. Indeed it is only the work of a master which could contain such blemishes and still be great. Similar flaws sometimes deface the greatest works of literature--for instance, the putting out of Gloucester’s eyes in “Lear,” or the Walpurgis Night’s Dream in the first part of “Faust.” And so it is with “Henry Esmond.” It is marred by one or two dreadful deformities; and yet, in spite of them, it is perhaps the most charming novel ever written.

The book opens with one of the most exquisite scenes in all literature, where young Esmond, a lad twelve years of age, who is supposed to be the illegitimate son of Thomas, Viscount Castlewood, and who has led a rather hard life as a page of the old viscountess, and been left alone in the great house after his father’s death, is now found in the yellow gallery by Lady Castlewood, the young and beautiful wife of the new viscount, when she comes with her husband to take possession of the property. The scene is thus described:

“She stretched out her hand--indeed, when was it that that hand
did not stretch out to do an act of kindness, or to protect grief
and ill-fortune? ‘And this is our kinsman,’ she said; ‘and what
is your name, kinsman?’

“‘My name is Henry Esmond,’ said the lad, looking up at her in
a sort of delight and wonder, for she had come upon him as a
_Dea certe_, and appeared the most charming object he had ever
looked on. Her golden hair was shining in the gold of the sun;
her complexion was of a dazzling bloom; her lips smiling, and her
eyes beaming with a kindness which made Harry Esmond’s heart beat
with surprise.

“‘His name is Henry Esmond, sure enough, my lady,’ said Mrs.
Worksop, the housekeeper (an old tyrant whom Henry Esmond plagued
more than he hated), and the old gentlewoman looked significantly
toward the late lord’s picture; as it now is, in the family,
noble and severe-looking, with his hand on his sword and his
order on his cloak, which he had from the Emperor during the war
on the Danube against the Turk.

“Seeing the great and undeniable likeness between this portrait
and the lad, the new viscountess, who had still hold of the boy’s
hand as she looked at the picture, blushed and dropped the hand
quickly, and walked down the gallery, followed by Mrs. Worksop.

“When the lady came back, Harry Esmond stood exactly in the same
spot and with his hand as it had fallen when he dropped it on his
black coat.