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The New

British Novelist

The modern philosopher or philosophaster, not being in his normal condition at all addicted to "best sellers," who for any reason has prescribed to him, or prescribes to himself, a course of "light reading," has his difficulties with his authors as the sage with "that person who was once a captain of the Royal Navy, and a very extraordinary ornament he must have been to it." What strikes him about the novelists now most in vogue among critical readers, is by no means their imbecility. Far indeed from that. It is the very gloomy view they take of life. Mr. Hardy has now become a survivor of a former generation of novelists, among whom his sense of the excess of the tragic over the comic elements in human life and destiny was as noteworthy as his other gifts. The "happyending" was by no means so much a necessary element to him as to the easier-going of his fellow-craftsmen. We even find him in one of his earlier novels signalizing "the increasing difficulty of revelling in the general situation." He is by no means among the optimists. But his philosophy of life is a cheerful and jocund inculcation when it is confronted with that of those among the present purveyors of British fiction who are most distinguished for intellectual insight and technical skill. Mr. Hardy is a Pangloss compared with these. That terrible sentence of Swift's, "happiness is a perpetual possession of being well deceived," might be the motto of all their works. Life is not, in their pages, "a battle and a march,"

or even "a struggle" for itself. It is, simply, a "dose," an unmitigated dose. In the most authentic-looking report we can get of contemporary Britain, it is presented as a scene from which prompt suicide seems to offer the most dignified and agreeable escape. English life is of course not the utter failure that it is here represented. Contrariwise, it is a success to the extent and for the reason to and for which Horace Greeley claimed success for one of his lectures:-"More stayed in than went out." But the question recurs with urgency why it should be painted in such gloomy colors by the most artistic of its delineators.

Much is doubtless to be allowed for what may be called an era of transition; for the feeling of spiritual homelessness which, if not peculiar to Great Britain, but common, more or less, to all the modern world, is accompanied in Great Britain more than elsewhere by the shifting of landmarks, the transformation or disappearance of immemorial institutions. The feeling itself is no more novel than it is local or national. "In Memoriam" is over sixty years of age, and Clough's less popular but not less symptomatic questionings not much younger. Yet the novelists contemporary with these poets by no means anticipated the dejection of the novelists of the period, half a century later, which unfortunately has no poets of its own at all. Something there may be in the sense of comparative national failure, since, great and world-wide a fact as the British Empire is, and talking much more about its "Imperialism" than it was half a century ago, there is no denying that it is not altogether the overwhelming and incomparable fact that it was then. This may well be one of the reasons that make the contemporary British novelist feel, as one of him has described it, that he is "the son of a time between two ages." But it seems also that the new British novelist has betaken himself to France for his point of view as well as for his technique and

his liberty. His enfranchisement, indeed, is itself capital fact. He finds himself emancipated from the fear of the Young Person, to an extent of which his predecessors did not dream, and is quite free to talk about things which to them were "tacenda"; and he rejoices in what Macaulay calls "the evils of newly acquired freedom." But, it also seems, he finds a society in which "hedonism" has supplanted more strenuous forms of faith. French fiction, in the hands of its recent masters, takes as gloomy and dispiriting a view of human life and destiny as any literary expression ever did, and current British fiction seems to be adopting the French point of view. The primary necessity of amusement, taking largely, the form of the predominance of "sport," seems, by the evidence of these reporters, to have supplanted the old British subconsciousness that happiness was a by-product, and must come in the course of the day's work or not at all. This change is not, it must be owned, an exhilarating social phenomenon. One is struck, while meditating these things, by the report of a Briton, an exile from his native land for many years, who returns to London and tells, in the form not of fiction but of a letter to the Times, how London strikes him. This wanderer, apparently an Anglo-Indian, apprehends the renewal, on a great scale, of the struggle between Europe and Asia, and is by no means altogether confident of the victory of Europe; a main reason for his distrust being "the realization" by the swarming peoples of the East and South of Asia, "of the great truth which the West is forgetting, that true happiness lies in unhurried work and not in aimless leisure."

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pose to undermine our happiness. It was a book, moreover, which we had both longed to possess, and great was our pleasure when it came to us at Easter through the remembrance of a friend who little thought what disturbing consequences were to flow from her kind thoughtfulness. Its pages were almost as attractive to Belinda as were those of the catalogues of the flower-seed houses, which, resplendent with their gorgeously colored blooms, come to her from all directions every spring, and in which, as is her annual wont, she buries and loses herself, fascinated with the task of filling out the order blank for seeds.

Although the area of the flower garden which is her personal delight and her personal care is only twenty by ten feet, she felt, on this memorable day in spring—a dies irae it proved to be for me!-under moral obligations, for some inscrutable reason, to fill in all the blanks in the triple column order sheet from her favorite seed house. . It was while I was gently remonstrating with her for her extravagance in buying so many varieties of seeds for so small a flower garden that The Serpent made his unexpected and dramatic entrance upon the scene. Without replying to my remonstrance, Belinda picked up the Easter book which, with the seed catalogues, had occupied her undivided attention for several evenings, and, turning briskly to a full-page picture, the location of which she evidently knew by heart, she passed it over to me, remarking quietly, "Read that legend, please."

I did so. It ran as follows: "Poet's Narcissus, naturalized along an open woodland walk, where they require absolutely no care. A thousand bulbs cost less than fifty cigars." Somewhat dazed I read the last sentence again. Yes, there was no mistaking it; there it was, in uncompromising simplicity and directness"A thousand bulbs cost less than fifty cigars!" It certainly was a facer, but so slow are my wits in such domestic emergencies that the perfectly obvious rejoinder which this incredible statement invited did not occur to me, in the exact phraseology which would have made my words most crushingly effective, until the next morning when I was spraying the young hollyhock leaves with Bordeaux mixture; and my pride as well as my sense of humor told me that it was then too late.

I did not give up smoking as a result of this encounter, but I did change my cigars to a less expensive brand, a concession which the logic of the situation seemed to demand. At

the same time I thought it wise to supplant, if possible, the impression left in Belinda's mind by that mischievous legend under the picture of Poet's Narcissus, and to this end I blithely handed her one evening "My Lady Nicotine," asking her to look it over at her leisure. The selection was unfortunate. Indeed, I could not, as it turned out, have made a greater blunder. Many years had passed since I had read Barrie's delightful book, and I remembered it vaguely as devoted to the glorification of smoking. After glancing over a few pages Belinda's face lighted up, and with the eager words, "Listen to this!" she read: "If men would only consider that every cigar they smoke would buy part of a piano-stool in terracotta plush, and that for every pound tin of tobacco purchased, away goes a vase for growing dead geraniums in, they would surely hesitate."

Now Belinda can see the point of a joke, but the absorbing nature of the economic question involved in our controversy left her blind for the moment to the humorous significance of that inspired phrase in the last clause she had read, in which the author so deftly turns upside down the argument that his words seem at first to convey. Rather than risk overtaxing her reasoning faculty on this point, it was far easier to admit, with a more or less forced laugh, that she had scored again. Cowardly and condescendingly masculine, do you say? I plead guilty to both counts in the indictment. But you know in your heart of hearts, if you are a man, that you would have done the same.

As must always be the case, a compromise was the outcome of this awkward situation, Belinda cutting down her order from fifty to thirty packages of flower seeds, and I finally giving up, with a modicum of regret, even Connecticut cigars for a pipe. I began with a briarwood which, after a few weeks, by a supplementary clause to our original treaty, was left in the shed over nights. What the next step may be is in the hands of fate. A newspaper paragraph some time ago referred to the curious fact that five near-by towns in Missouri possessed a monopoly of the manufacture of corn-cob pipes, of which they make many millions every year, for distribution all over the world. If the price of flower seeds continues to increase, and if Belinda's garden ambition grows apace, I can foresee the awful possibility that I may even be forced to become a patron of this Missouri industry in one of the byproducts of the vast corn fields of the South

west. Then my humiliation will be complete thanks to the Poet's Narcissus, of which "a thousand bulbs cost less than fifty cigars!"

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O, I don't mean the cat, the fireside sphinx which has been so happily exploited by Miss Repplier and others. I mean Bridget, or Hilda, or Chloe-the person who cooks our meals, waits on our tables, comes in and out of our bed-chambers, presides over our nurseries, knows our secrets and keeps her own. She sees us where we live our lives. We see her only where she does her work. And yet, time was when we knew (or did we only fancy that we knew?) something of the heart that beat behind the snowy bib, of the brain that worked underneath the immaculate cap. That time is past, even though one may find here and there a warm-hearted Irish woman or old-fashioned negro mammy.

The Sphinx in the Household

Doubtless this is partly our own fault, for we are not greatly interested in the private affairs of our servants, having many other things to think of. But it sometimes seems as though they guarded themselves as jealously from our interest as from our indifference; and so it comes about that, while we are of course aware that their point of view is different from ours, we are hardly apt to realize their actual attitude. Take, for instance, your good nurse who is so devoted to your children, and seems

and perhaps is so attached to yourself. In the intimacy of the nursery she learns to know you well. You fancy, too, that you know her. You are sure that you know her disposition, and very likely she has told you many details of her past life, and it does not occur to you that there is very much more to learn." But one day it happens that in her presence a chance allusion is made to some detail of the labor question, perhaps to a strike in which she has no personal interest, and where the exactions of the strikers are so unreasonable that it never occurs to you that any intelligent working woman will not see the matter sensibly-that is, as you see it yourself. Watch her face as it hardens, becomes antagonistic, and, above all, secretive. You have a sudden cold feeling that you and she are on opposite sides of a gulf.

With regard to the confidences of our servants and the tales which they tell us of their families and their early lives, sympathetic though we may be by instinct, long experience

has developed in us an attitude of incredulity. For, poor dears, they love to romance. Why should we wonder at it? It is thus that they grope for a foothold on the eminence where we stand. Also, it amuses them and gratifies the creative instinct. If they haven't inventive genius enough for anything else, they can at least tell us that they are only doing our work in order to "educate" a small brother or sister. That, to our knowledge, their wages go on their backs does not, to their minds, invalidate the tale.

As for the man-servant, who shall tell what thoughts are his? When you think of it, what is more remarkable than the self-control of the excellent man-servant? Most remarkable, of course, when he is young and when some outlet for animal spirits and physical energy seems a vital necessity. This youth who moves about your house with noiseless footfall, low, restrained voice, and deferential manner is holding down every natural impulse. That there should be a reaction seems almost inevitable, and we can hardly be surprised at any form that it may take. Probably it is not often so harmless as in a case which I heard of lately. A lady, a guest in the house of some friends, was one evening prevented by sudden indisposition from accompanying her hosts to an entertainment, and remained in her room. In the course of the evening she was alarmed by hearing loud howls and shrieks proceeding

from one of the lower rooms. She hastened to investigate, and came upon a much embarrassed young butler.

"I beg your pardon, ma'am," he said. "I'd never have done it if I'd known you were in.” In reply to her anxious questions he explained: "Why, you see, ma'am, I have to keep so still all day that I feel like I should go crazy, and so when the family are all out I just make a noise and feel better."

There are persons who think that we shall solve our servant question by reducing it to a purely business basis, as impersonal as the relations between factory hand and factory owner, but this seems impossible, for in the house so much living has to be mixed with the business. In the nature of the case the relation must be personal, at least in the average household, for it has to do with our most intimate life, and involves in the day's work many unexpected situations requiring a certain amount of consultation between mistress and servant. Then, too, there must be a spurt of work at one time, offset by unusual leisure at another. In short, the average housekeeping cannot be machine-made. To my thinking this is fortunate, as preserving the individuality of the laborer and promoting human relations between employer and employee. Yet, at best, it is a one-sided relation. To my servant I am an open book. To me my servant is a sphinx.

THE FIELD OF ART·

T

STRAY STATUES

HE Art Commission of New York City has been devoting a considerable part of its annual report to inculcating the desirableness of providing suitable sites and surroundings for public monuments. Very justly and wisely so. The effect of the best monuments, sculpturally and even architecturally considered, may be quite ruined and nullified by placing them where they cannot be really effective. On the other hand, a monument which is not in itself above mediocrity may take on real significance and even distinction from its effective filling of a frame or stopping of a vista.

There is not much to choose, in this respect, between the two branches of the Englishspeaking race. Neither is entitled to shoot out the tongue of scorn or raise the eyebrow of superiority at the monumental performances of the other.

The American in England, remarking the statues in the market-places, the "idola fori," is not likely to be put to patriotic shame by the contrast. Truly, is the Burns of Central Park (the work, by the way, of a British sculptor) any funnier than the Lichfield Sam Johnson? Nay, apart from its associations, why should American or Briton not frankly own that the transept of Westminster Abbey is little, if at all, less comical, or, if you choose, less tragical, than the "Chamber of Horrors" in the rotunda of the American Capitol? There is as little "collectivism," as much "individualism," in the one case as in the other—and this equally in the choice of subjects and in the choice of artists. It is a heterogeneous commemoration of a "job lot" of heroes, heterogeneous even in respect of the primary requirement of a common scale. A statuette of Daniel Webster cannot adjoin a colossal figure of Hannibal Hamlin, say, without exciting hilarity among the young and thoughtless, even though the statuette and the colossus should be equally and perfectly well done. Carlyle, in "HudVOL. L.-36

son's Statue," has described, with an accuracy equally applicable to America, the method in which the British promoter of a statue, whether to a permanent celebrity or an ephemeral notoriety, goes about to get that statue made.

One of those unfortunates with money and no work, whose haunts lie in the dilettante line, among artists' studios, picture sales, and the like regionsan inane kingdom much frequented by the inane in these times him it strikes, in some inspired moment, that if a public subscription for a statue to low. Perhaps some artist, to whom he is Macenas, somebody could be started, good results would folmight be got to do the statue; at all events there would inspired dilettante, for his own share, might get upon be extensive work and stir going on-whereby the committees, see himself named in the newspapers; might assist in innumerable consultations, open utterances of speech and balderdash.

Deformed as these remarks are by the satirical spirit, no American who has frequented artistic circles with his eyes open can fail to recognize the picture. The natural result of the process, in America as in England, is, to continue quoting Carlyle: "They have raised a set of the ugliest statues, and to the most extraordinary persons, ever seen under the sun before." Thomas is concerned, in this essay, mainly with the memorability or commemorability of the subject. His opinion of the artistic merit of the resultant statue was not of much account. And, as to the question of site, he did not go into it at all, though it is at the base of the artistic discussion. Sure enough, we also, under the guidance of our own dilettanti, have erected some ugly statues to some unmemorable persons. The British project of a statue to Hudson, "the Railway King," which project Carlyle was immediately satirizing, fell through, indeed, in London, But New York came very perilously near erecting a statue to Boss Tweed, and did actually erect one to its then "Railway King," Commodore Vanderbilt. The "dilettante" to whom this work of art owed its existence was one De Groot, who may have been the sculptor as well as the promoter. You may see the astonishing result any time when you are in New York and will take the

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