"^r/tyorlh^oy jt " ... Copyright 1^'^ CMp y\ COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT . w-\^^r^^^^. Literary and Social SILHOUETTES BY HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN '% '^MH 3 1894* V>' or washV H^^J ^ NEW YORK HARPER AND BROTHERS MDCCCXCIV }Hi'h'/ (V 1 z ^ Copyright, 1894, by Harper & Brothers. All rights reserved. CONTENTS PAGE TYPES OF AMERICAN AVOMEN i GERMAN AND AMERICAN WOMEN 24 THE AMERICAN NOVELIST AND HIS PUBLIC . . 41 THE PROGRESSIVE REALISM OF AMERICAN FIC- TION 58 THE HERO IN FICTION 79 AMERICAN LITERARY CRITICISM 97 AMERICA IN EUROPEAN LITERATURE 117 THE ETHICS OF ROBERT BROWNING 131 MARS vs. APOLLO 147 PHILISTINISM 163 SOME STRAY NOTES ON ALPHONSE DAUDET . 178 MY LOST SELF 194 THE MERIDIAN OF LIFE 205 TYPES OF AMERICAN WOMEN ERBERT SPENCER insinu- ates in one of his sociological works that the indirection, the coquetry, \.\\^ finesse, nay, all the arts which we find so adorable in women, are modified forms of hypocrisy. Before the advent of civil- ization, woman had in pure self-defence to practise an elaborate deception. In order to please her brutal lord and secure predominance among dangerous rivals, she had to disguise her natural senti- ments, and return caresses for blows and smiles for discourtesy. As she could not accomplish her purposes by force, she became an expert in domestic diplomacy. The craftier, the more guileful, she was, the better were her chances of survival. And thus it has come to pass that, though the necessity for intricate behavior is now much lessened, women practise to-day, in a more elusive and refined way, the arts which the instinct of self-preservation im- posed upon their barbarous ancestresses. This is, as all will admit, an unpoetical theory, and a revolting one to a chival- rous mind. I, therefore, purposely shield myself behind the great name of Herbert Spencer in reproducing it. Though I do not vouch for it as true, I hold it to be not improbable. A number of unpleasant things will be found in the ancestry of every one of us, if we pursue our researches far enough back ; but, in my opinion, they redound to our credit, rather than the con- trary, if we convert them into something useful and agreeable. When we consider what malodorous things may have been distilled into the fragrance of the rose and the lily, it is scarcely worth while to regret a remote grandmother's mendacity which in the granddaughter is evaporat- ed into an archness and witchery, lending charm to her speech and a more exquisite flavor to her personality. I feel in such a case positively grateful to the grand- mother for having hoodwinked her lord. and do not question the ability of the fair descendant to do the same, though with- out coming into conflict with a single commandment of the Decalogue. The blunt command, "Thou shalt not," was, I suspect, meant for men rather than for women; for I have known some highly- developed members of the sex who have been able to wind in and out among the ten fatal prohibitions, coming dangerous- ly near some of them, but without getting entangled in any. There is to them a rare pleasure in this hazardous play — which again hints at an inherited com- plexity of character, never wholly com- prehensible to men. I have remarked that the necessity for duplicity of the cruder sort has lessened and is constantly lessening. But it has not altogether vanished. So long as marriage remains the normal fate of women, the vast majority of them will and must en- deavor to make themselves pleasing to men. They must consider primarily, not what they would like to be, but what men would like them to be. Because the feminine ideal for the average man is an unindividualized or but faintly individual- ized creature — a mere personification of the sex, as it were — the majority of girls pay homage to this unworthy ideal by simulating a clinging dependence and a featureless blankness of character. They repress their real selves, or consciously or unconsciously disguise them. Their ed- ucation, which, in this country as else- where, trains them in seei7ti7ig rather than in being, does not aim to make pronounced and capable individuals of them (as in the case of boys), but to develop them into the accepted, traditional type of woman- hood which is supposed to have the sanc- tion of the Bible and of the experience of the ages. As to the wisdom of this I do not wish at present to express an opinion. There is no doubt that when women do break away from this traditional standard, as more and more of them do, they be- come more outrees, more revolutionary in speech and conduct than men similarly in- clined. There is a good reason for this, or several good reasons. If a woman has the courage to aspire to anything beyond the common lot, the world puts her on the de- fensive, and by its hostile criticism forces her to account for herself, and drives her then by degrees into a more extreme po- sition than she had at first thought of occupying. For the sake of a consistency which we do not demand of others, she is obliged to antagonize doctrines and institutions which she had never before thought of antagonizing, and to define her attitude towards everything under the sun, until she becomes unwholesomely conscious in every breath she draws. In the countries of Europe there is scarcely an exception to this rule. The woman who is not content to be a mere embodiment of her sex, and who there- fore by individual aspiration strives to dififerentiate herself, is tabooed by the best society and made the target of cheap ridicule. She may, like Florence Nightin- gale or Sister Dora, be permitted to bear more than her part of the world's bur- dens, but she is not permitted to aspire for more than her allotted share of its privileges. It is not so very long since similar conditions prevailed in the United States ; nay, they do to a certain extent yet prevail. But that a very substantial progress has been made here is neverthe- less certain. Our social conditions afford a wider scope for individual development than do those of Europe. One of the first observations which the English or Ger- man traveller is apt to make after landing in New York, is that American women have more vivacity, more character, more freedom of speech and manners than the women of England or Germany. That is but another way of saying that they are more individualized. They have a more distinct, and as a rule a more piquant, flavor of personality. They are not mere- ly specimens of the feminine gender more or less attractive, and labelled for the sake of convenience Minnie, Jennie, or Fannie, but they are primarily Minnie and Jennie and Fannie (though I could wish they had nobler and more dignified appellations), endowed with and modified by their fem- inine gender. It follows from this that the types of women are here more varied and more pronounced than in Europe ; and if an experience of twenty-five years, devoted to discreet observation and sym- pathetic study, gives me a right to judge, I should like to disburden my note-books of some more or less pretentious sketches which are beginning to rebel against their obscurity. The first woman whose acquaintance I made in the United States (in 1869) was a very pretty Western girl, who took a peculiar pleasure in saying and doing things which she knew would shock my European notions of propriety. She was slangy in her speech, careless in her pro- nunciation, and bent upon " having a good time" without reference to the prohi- bitions which are framed for the special purpose of annoying women. I was some- times in danger of misinterpreting her conduct, but soon came to the conclusion that there was no harm in her. She ruled her father and her mother, who some- times interposed feeble objections to her plans for her own and my amusement ; but the end invariably was that a puz- zled assent was yielded to all her pro- ceedings. She had about as much idea of propriety (in the European sense) as a cat has of mathematics. She recognized no law except her own sovereign will, and her demands were usually so em- phatic that no one could disagree with her without the risk of quarrelling. Patri- otic she was — bristling with combative- ness if a criticism was made which implied disrespect of American manners or insti- tutions. She was good-natured, generous to a fault, and brimming with energy. This young girl is the type of American womanhood which has become domes- ticated in European fiction. She is to French, English, and German authors the American type par excellence. She is a familiar figure in the French drama, and her pistol-firing and her amusing rowdy- ism relieve the monotony of many a dull novel. Ouida has caricatured her in Moths and Sardou in L'Oncle Sam. Henry James ventured some years ago to publish a mild edition of her in Daisy Miller, and outraged patriotism denounced him as a slanderer of his country, declaring that he had libelled American womanhood. I, too, in a recent novel, was tempted to make a little literary capital out of my early ac- quaintance with this personification of the Declaration of Independence.* I was told by a chorus of reviewers (and I suspected the soprano note in most of them) that the type was one of my own invention ; that it did not exist except in my jaundiced eye; that, if it did exist, I had outrageously caricatured it ; and that I had conclusive- ly proved myself an alien, devoid of sym- pathy with the American character. Now, I had prided myself on having avoided the farcical exaggerations of my Euro- pean co7ifreres. I had imagined that my "emancipated young woman " was strict- ly true to life, and that no single trait of her vivacious personality had been set down in malice or for the sake of effect. It would seem odd indeed, considering the fact that the novelists of all foreign countries have pounced upon this type as being peculiarly American, if the type had no existence. Such unanimity in misrepresentation would scarcely be con- ceivable, unless they had come together with malice aforethought and agreed among themselves as to how they were * Delia Saunders in The Light of Her Coufitenafice. to blacken the character of cisatlantic womanhood. But if I had been a party to such a dastardly plot, I dare say I should have forfeited my domestic peace long ago ; for I have furnished the most incontestable proof possible that I am a stranger to the sentiments which animate these wretched traducers. I may, there- fore, perhaps, be permitted to remark that it need not argue disloyalty to the Consti- tution if a novelist refuses to depict coii- leur de rose everything he sees. The in- dependent young Americaine who pleases herself without reference to the tastes of others, is not a wholly agreeable phenom- enon ; but it is of no use to deny her ex- istence. She is very prevalent in Europe ; and though she rarely invades the so- called best society of our seaboard cities, you need only go abroad or sufficiently far west to find her in all her glory. The best society, it may be observed in parenthesis, is not the best place to study American types. The highest civilization is hostile to types. It tends towards uni- formity of manners, rubs off angularities of conduct, obliterates glaring character- istics. At first glance, a New York after- noon tea does not differ strikingly from a London afternoon tea. In both places people go to show themselves, half out of vanity, half as a matter of duty. They have no expectation of being amused, nor are they amused ; but they depart with the amiable fiction upon their lips that they have had " such a delightful time." A certain well-bred hypocrisy is absolutely necessary to make social inter- course smooth and agreeable. It is one of the last results of civilization. The blunt sincerity of the frontiersman stamps him as a barbarian. Women of the Sarah Althea Hill variety flourish yet in the ex- treme West, and are typical of a semi- barbarous social condition. They are glaring illustrations of our social history which reveal more than would a hun- dred pages of eloquent text. But even in California that type of woman has ceased to excite admiration ; and when it is no longer admired it will soon become ex- tinct. I have heard Californians declare that it never had any existence except in the newspapers ; and of course I meekly acquiesced, knowing that Californians car- ry an incontrovertible argument in their hip pockets. But leaving that question an open one, it is safe to assert that the standard of conduct which demands self- restraint and repression of picturesque eccentricities is slowly travelling west- ward, and will ere long make us sigh for the dear old days of romance immortal- ized by Bret Harte and by the dime novel. There is, however, a type of American womanhood, by no means devoid of cis- atlantic flavor, which has nothing to fear from the march of civilization. She is in- deed an agent of civilization and a most powerful one. I met her for the first time in 1869, and have been meeting her daily ever since. Though she may ob- ject to the name, I shall call her the As- piring Woman, As a rule she is not handsome, and she is not conspicuous for taste in dress. She regards dress and all other things which have no bearing upon her intellectual development as being of slight consequence. It would be impos- sible to arouse her enthusiasm for a French bonnet, and the shrill little ejacu- lations of rapture in which other women compass a world of meaning (or the op- posite) are not found in her vocabulary. She rebukes you with a glance of mild reprobation if you indulge in " frivolous talk " or refer to any physical traits in a member of her sex. There is no affecta- tion in this ; it is rather the result of a long puritanic descent, and amounts to a second conscience. She knows the flesh only as something to be mortified, and though she may have abandoned the scriptural grounds for the mortification, she is, in the midst of her consciousness of evil, so good as almost to be able to dispense with the commandments. I have known her skeptical and I have known her religious ; but skepticism sat lightly upon her, like a divestible garment, and could not conceal her innate goodness. She is frequently anaemic, and in New England inclines to be flat-chested. The vigor of her physical life usually leaves much to be desired ; the poverty of diet in ascetic ancestors has often reduced her vitality, making her undervalue the con- cerns of the flesh, and overvalue the rel- ative importance of the things of the spirit. I purposely qualify these state- ments, and do not represent them as be- ing invariably true. The aspiring woman is so extensive and numerous a species that it naturally embraces many varieties. The variety I have described is a con- spicuous one, but it is not the only one. There is one trait, however, which they all have in common : they are all bent upon improving themselves, in season and out of season. When they indulge in anything frivolous, it is always from a utilitarian motive. Thus I remember once dancing a waltz with an aspiring young woman. It was at the Cornell University, at the season when the all- absorbing topic is the graduating thesis. Just as we swung out upon the floor she exploded this query in my ears : " Now, won't you be kind enough to give me, just in a few words, the gist of Spinoza's ' Eth- ics ' ?" It did not surprise me afterwards to learn that she danced because it was good for the digestion. And her dancing was what might have been expected ; it was a conscientious exercise. At every bar of the music she emphasized the time with a jerk, as if she were trying to help me along. If there is any single trait which radi- cally distinguishes American society, as a whole, from European society, it is a universal hopefulness and aspiration. The European Philistine, though he may not be content with his lot, rarely thinks of rising above the station to which he was born. Society appears so fixed and unyielding that it seems like presump- tion on his part to defy its prejudice. It requires a very exceptional courage, therefore, and talents of a high order, to aspire successfully. But in the United States aspiration is the rule, not the ex- ception. The man who is content to re- main what he is, who does not expect to rise to some dizzy height of wealth or of fame, was until recently a vara avis in the Western States. And as for the young women, they were animated by an am- bition which in many cases was pathetic. I met, during my sojourn in Ohio and Illinois, daughters of farmers and me- chanics who were cultivating themselves in secret, groping their way most piti- i6 fully, without help or guidance, and often gulping the most abominable stuff under the impression that they were being in- tellectually nourished. The young woman who cultivates poet- ry under the most distressing circumstan- ces, and perhaps finally publishes a pitiful little volume at her own expense, is a butt for newspaper ridicule ; but to me she is a pathetic character. If there were not in her a spark of the Promethean fire, she would not expend so much vital energy and deluded hope, in the face of many discouragements, on her clumsy or in- sipid rhymes. She may, indeed, be a con- ceited pretender; but the probabilities are nine to one that she is something better. Having had no opportunities for culture beyond such as the district school offers, she has, of course, no chance of succeeding. A utilitarian would advise her to throw her verses into the fire, to tuck up her skirts, and to help her mother scrub, darn, and wash dishes. Such a counsellor would be worthy of attention. But, in the first place, he would find that the mother would object to the help (for she is, as a rule, proud of her daughter's unusual accomplishments); and, second- ly, something valuable would vanish out of American life, if all the misguided and largely futile aspiration were lost which constitutes the tragedy and the dignity of thousands of narrow, toilsome lives. When the failure is, at last, tacitly ac- knowledged and the hope of success aban- doned, something yet remains, which is beyond the reach of hostile critics and an indifferent public. This may be a mere heightened self-respect, with a touch of defiance, or it may be the lifting of the character to a higher plane than it would have reached without the futile aspira- tion. Women who have passed through an experience of this sort transfer, when they become mothers, their ambition to their children, and will make any sacrifice in the hope of enabling their sons to at- tain what they missed. It is a priceless blessing to a man to have had such a mother; and all over this country they are scattered in log-huts and farm-houses, in tenements and in brown-stone fronts. I have often endeavored, after each return from a European pilgrimage, to make clear to myself wherein the charm of American women consists. I do not mean the mere charm of womanhood, for that is universal ; but something su- peradded, depending upon climate and social conditions, which lends to it a heightened flavor, a more exquisite bou- quet. I have always sympathized with the perverter of Pope who declared that the noblest study of mankind is woman ; and of all womankind no variety better repays sympathetic and discriminating study than the American. For the pur- poses of the sociologist no less than those of the novelist, women are unquestion- ably more interesting than men ; and in particular, American women are more interesting than American men. As a leisured class (comparatively speaking), they have more time to cultivate the amenities of life than have their hus- bands and brothers. They read more ; and a larger proportion than will be found anywhere else in the world have inter- ests beyond dress and social tittle-tattle. Some few have vigorous, well-trained in- tellects, and naturally feel their superior- ity to the majority of men with whom they associate. They then rashly con- clude that women, as a rule, are the intel- lectual superiors of men, or would be if the same opportunities of education were afforded them ; and presently we find them in woman-suffrage conventions, pe- titioning legislatures and agitating for social reform. Far be it from me to throw ridicule upon these heroic protagonists, or to underestimate the value of their labors. Though I do not sympathize with some of their aims, I cannot but admire their intrepidity, their fortitude, their noble enthusiasm. The influence of their work is good, and we could ill afford to dispense with it. It is not to be denied, however, that they forfeit much of that charm which, in the present con- dition of the world, constitutes to the be- nighted male the chief attraction of the sex. I believe there is inherent in all women what may be called, without any invidious inference, a yearning for the common- place — for the normal lot. Those who protest most strenuously against the in- justice of society to their sex, are as a rule willing to exchange their uncomfortable prominence for the contented obscurity of a domestic hearth. If it were possible to explore their innermost hearts, I be- lieve it would be found that they have an underlying respect, not to say fondness, for the tyranny which they justly de- nounce. Madame de Stael's willingness to exchange all her fame and intellectual superiority for Madame de Recamier's gift of pleasing, is the most profoundly womanly trait recorded of that brilliant amazon. In the correspondence of George Eliot, too, there is a regretful acceptance of the eminence that is thrust upon her; and in her personal life a kind of re- versed aspiration is perceptible, a yearn- ing for the ordinary ties of ordinary wom- en — for love, dependence, self-surrender. The apparent aberrations of her career are easily accounted for on this hypoth- esis. As regards this fundamental character- istic, American women do not differ from their sisters the world over. The point in which they do differ is chiefly a certain intellectual alertness, an adaptability, a readiness to apply their minds quickly to any new topic, a mental resonance which responds promptly to a deft touch. This accounts largely for the charm they exercise over foreigners. The pro- portion of truly delightful women, well- bred, sympathetic, and intelligent, is larger in the best society of our great cities than in society of a corresponding grade in England, France, or Germany. In stateliness, dignity, and finish of man- ner, the aristocracy of the old world nat- urally excel them ; but it is marvellous to observe the readiness with which, when they marry noblemen, they adapt them- selves to their new surroundings and beat "the daughters of a hundred earls" on their own ground. They become ^or^a^ides frames in an incredibly short time.yet with- out losing their American cleverness, deli- cacy, and piquancy of style. Some of the grandest ladies one meets inVienna, Paris, Berlin, and London, the sight of whom awakens a sneaking admiration for feu- dalism and a dim disloyalty to the Declara- tion of Independence, turn out, on inquiry, to be transplanted American heiresses. And yet no one would have believed, without proof to the contrary, that this combination of graciousness and dignity, these delicate gradations of cordiality and reserve, this consummate skill in dealing with nice questions of etiquette, could have sprung from the soil of democracy. American ladies at home, though their native tact usually comes to their rescue, rarely possess in the same degree this adroitness. We have not yet gotten through the imitative stage in our social customs and observances, and no one who has an alien model in view can be- have with perfect naturalness and secur- ity. The English yoke sits heavily upon that part of New York society which claims to be "the best," and upon the girls in particular. That distressing hand- shake, with the elbow raised at an angle of ninety degrees, is one of the recent im- portations. The rule not to introduce, for which we are also indebted to London, is another heavy incubus, which strangles conversation and produces awkwardness and misery. But the women who make it a point to be abreast of London in all these more or less arbitrary observances are ap- parently unaware that they are robbing themselves of their highest charm when they are no longer frankly American. It is their national flavor, refined by intelli- gence and culture, which makes them a power both at home and abroad ; and they should have the courage to be proud of this nationality, and to show their pride in it by abandoning their attitude of social dependence upon Great Britain. 1890 GERMAN AND AMERICAN WOMEN CYNICAL friend of mine, who is a bachelor, once made an observation which cHngs likeaburrto my memory. It had always appeared a sig- nificant circumstance to him, he said, that God, when "he saw all that he had made, and, behold, it was very good," had not yet created woman. After her appearance upon the scene, the goodness of creation might be rationally questioned. At all events, the Bible is silent on the subject. I ought, perhaps, to add that my cynical friend is a German, and that, if he had been an American, he would — well, he would not have had the courage of his conviction. He would never have dared to utter so heterodox an opinion. The United States, as we all know, is the 25 women's paradise, and they have a thou- sand ingenious ways of mailing life a bur- den to the man who has the audacity not to admire them, I would rather that a millstone were tied about my neck, and that I were sunk in the depths of the sea, than court the terrors of such a fate. Therefore I shield myself judiciously be- hind the back of my cynical friend, with whose opinions, I beg to state, 1 have not the remotest sympathy. I dare say he had been jilted, which, to the feminine mind, is a sufficient cause for all vagaries of conduct and sentiment. However, it may be urged as an ameliorating circum- stance, that (though a German-American) he had known chiefly his own country- women, and the few specimenc of the American woman with whom he had come in contact had been of that no- madic species which one meets in second- class family hotels and boarding-houses. I don't blame any man for questioning the rationality of creation after having been doomed, for four years, to such compan- ionship. But, of course, I was too chival- rous to make such an admission to this 26 Teutonic traducer of American woman- hood ; and accordingly I found myself launched, before long, in a hot debate on the comparative merits of German and American women. To quote it verbatim would be an endless task ; but it had the effect of stimulating my mind to grapple with this subject — and it is terrible what an amount of reflection may be expended upon it without the least palpable result. I shall, however, venture to present a few vague and extremely shadowy conclusions, from which I shall instantly recede, if any fair reader objects to them. And she — the fair reader — will kindly bear in mind that all that is uncomplimentary to her sex in the following dissertation is due to the jaundiced cynicism of my crude Teutonic friend ; while all of which she may be pleased to approve is due solely and ex- clusiv^ely to my own genial and intelli- gent observation. Well, then, the American society girl {cym'cus loqitititr) is brought up without any adequate sense of duty. She is made to believe or to infer from the attitude of her environment, that the chief business of life is to amuse one's self ; and that the day is to be counted as lost which does not afford some new pleasurable excite- ment. Mothers, who have themselves known the inestimable discipline of hard- ship and toil, have a natural desire to make their daughters' youth brighter and happier than was their own ; and by this generous motive they are impelled to in- troduce a ruinous laxity into their rela- tions with their children. The dear girls must have a good time, at all hazards ; and their pleasure and convenience must be consulted above all else. The father and the mother sacrifice themselves to this end, and fondly imagine that they are furthering their daughters' welfare by removing every stone out of their path. As a consequence, they rear beautiful little monsters of selfishness and con- ceit, who at the proper age trip sweet- ly into matrimony with a thousand de- mands, and without the least conception of the serious duties which that relation imposes upon them. When the husband fails to subordinate himself (as he is very apt to do) with the same willingness as papa and mamma did, to the whims and caprices of his young wife — particularly if he fails to provide amusements enough, regardless of expense— then follow weep- ing and wailing and possibly also gnashing of teeth ; little scenes are enacted (in strict privacy at first) in which neither party is apt to appear to advantage; and trouble rises, like a great blood-red moon, with an ominous face, on the matrimonial horizon. The postulate that women should^be in- dependent and the equals of men sounds eminently fair. But when two such in- dependents marry, they are sure to get into collision. One or the other must surrender a portion of his independence, or retire from the partnership. It is a most deplorable fact that so many choose the latter alternative, and thereby do their share towards undermining the founda- tions of society. Men and women are no less fit, by nature, for the married state here than elsewhere ; but the utterly lax and slipshod education, more particularly of young women, is responsible for the ruin which overtakes so large a percent- age of American households. I am — that is to say, my German friend was — old- fashioned enough to believe that there are no privileges which do not also in- volve duties; and that it is far more im- portant to impress a young person, of either sex, with a consciousness of the latter than of the former. I never knew any one, breathing the air of our democ- racy, who did not, without much guid- ance, discover what society owed to him ; but I have known a great many who had only the dimmest notions of their own obligations towards society. Now, in Germany, the situation is, in some respects, exactly the opposite. There women have the acutest percep- tion of the very things which American women largely lack. They arc trained from childhood in ideas which we regard as mediaeval, and from which we emanci- pated ourselves in 1789 or thereabouts. First, the German maidens regard wife- hood and motherhood as their legitimate vocation ; and they have a veritable hor- ror of anything that savors of " woman's rights." They do not ask for the omis- sion of the " obey " from the marriage service (as a fair friend of mine did); nor do they interpret it in a Pickwickian sense, as another charming damsel of my acquaintance professed to have done, when she was reminded of the odious little verbs which she had been beguiled into uttering. Ah, but the German wom- en — what else can you expect of them ? They are so palpably inferior to their husbands ; and moreover, they dress atro- ciously, remarks a soprano voice at my elbow. Granted. They are far less com- plex than their American sisters ; they are less highly developed ; they have not (unless they are very high up in the so- cial scale) half the alertness of mind, facility of address, or independence of thought. They are bound by a rigid so- cial tradition, which our women repudi- ate. They glory in their domestic martyr- dom, their sacrifice of self, their loving and conscientious performance of their duties to husband and children. But, al- though one may admit that they are not individually as charming as American women in the corresponding social po- sition, it is a question which admits of different replies, whether they do not, other things being equal, make better wives and better mothers than — than — the ladies on the planet Jupiter. The sentiment of home, which is chiefly fos- tered by the mother, certainly exists in a higher and intenser degree in Germany than it does here ; the domestic ties mean more, and are regarded with a deeper re- spect. Look at Kaulbach's illustrations to Schiller's Song of the Bell, and you will see how they are permeated with this sen- timent of the sanctity of home, and what a tender poetic afflatus dignifies and en- nobles all the typical incidents of family life. What can be lovelier than the car- toon entitled " The Mother's Instruction," which exhales a breath of all that is sweet- est and best in the German Fatherland } I wish it were natural to exclaim, at the sight of such a scene, " How American !" instead of being obliged to say, " How German !" The fundamental trait of German wonr- anhood is— not intellectual brilliancy, not readiness of resource or practical sense, but self-sacrificing goodness of heart. We who are accustomed to more high- ly-flavored peculiarities are inclined to misjudge this kind of quiet, unobtrusive goodness, and so undervalue the sterling virtues which it conceals. But what alien- ates us still more is a certain sentimen- tal effusiveness and exuberance of feeling, which lie as remote as possible from the Anglo-Saxon temperament. What we fear above all things is to make ourselves ridiculous; and every exhibition of emo- tion has to us, unhappily, a lurking sug- gestion of the ridiculous. We, therefore, repress ourselves until we are in danger of becoming insincere and unnatural from sheer dread of compromising our pre- cious dignity. Now, the Germans, and particularly the German women, are never in the least troubled with this question of the ridiculous. They have, I verily be- lieve, a depression in their craniums where the bump of humor ought to have been situated ; which, of course, saves a deal of discomfort. But, as a compensa- tion, they possess the correlative virtue in which our society women, both old and young, are conspicuously lacking. I mean 33 a capacity for seriousness. What can be more distressing to a man, who has out- grown his first, callow youth, than the perpetual chaff and banter in which he is expected to indulge in his intercourse with ladies? I have felt positively mur- derous at times, after having spent an evening in the company of fair enchant- resses, who insisted upon being funny and seeing a lurking joke in every remark which I uttered. Now, I dare say I en- joy a good joke as much as any one ; but humor, which affords a delightful season- ing to conversation, becomes distaste- ful and unwholesome as a steady diet. Forced jesting, coupled with that ner- vous, half- hysterical vivacity which w^e all know so well, serves but to disguise poverty of thought. It is either because our young women have no capacity for serious thinking, or because they distrust the capacity which they possess, that they seek refuge in this imbecile jocularity. I am speaking, of course, of society women ; for I am well aware that, in the strata below, the humorous aspect of life is in no danger of predominating. 3 Nor am I blind to the fact that, within the society which I am criticising, there are many lovely and brilliant women, who incline me to thank God daily for the privilege of having been born their con- temporary. But these are radiant excep- tions which prove the rule. An over- whelming majority of the women who figure at routs, dinners, and balls seem shallov/ in heart and brain ; and they lack, moreover, that supreme charm of womanly dignity which covers all minor imperfections with a mantle of grace. They dress extremely well ; far better than a similar assemblage would be like- ly to do in any other part of the world. They are superficially clever, and adapt themselves with great readiness to any situation. But you will find, if you pene- trate beneath their outer armor of con- ventionality, a certain dryness and pov- erty of nature, a comparative absence of those warm, sweet, fundamentally womanly qualities which are the strength and the glory of womanhood ; and in their stead a host of petty and obtrusive little vanities ; a grim, hard-headed selfishness 35 and worldly calculation, which is deter- mined to get the most out of life with the least possible sacrifice ; and an essen- tial fiimsiness of character which makes them incapable of noble motives and dis- interested actions. This is the sort of women whose lives are filled with so- called social duties ; /. ^..visiting, person- al gossip, strife for precedence, snubs to supposed inferiors, flattering attention to superiors, and vain and mean ambitions that would scarcely seem worth the ex- penditure of one -tenth of the energy which they demand. They go to church, too, chiefly as a matter of form, and fig- ure conspicuously among the patrons of fashionable charities. But the spirit which should sanctify the deed is so glaringly absent, that the deed itself loses whatever virtue it might otherwise possess. It is the system of education to which I have alluded, or rather the lack of sys- tem, which is responsible for the preva- lence of this type. It is the combination of lax indulgence and neglect on the part of the parents — indulgence as regards material comforts, and neglect as regards 36 spiritual guidance and the training of character — which produces these fair, heartless sirens, whom we meet at New- port, Bar Harbor, and Narragansett Pier, whose shrill song is, however, apt to allure to perdition only men of their own species, unless indeed they be very young. Now, my cynical friend (whose opin- ions I have been quoting) has the audacity to maintain that the women in the upper strata of German society are finer and nobler specimens of their sex than Amer- ican women of the corresponding posi- tion. (I have long been pondering wheth- er I ought to challenge him to fight with pistols or with swords, unless he consents to withdraw this offensive remark; and as I shoot better than I fence, I am slowly gravitating towards the more deadly weap- on. In the meanwhile, I am in hopes that he will repent of his rudeness and recant.) But, as I was saying, he has the hardihood to insinuate that the German girls of to-day, themselves the result of conscientious education and often of stern discipline, are more impressive phenom- ena in their blonde innocence and Spar- tan simplicity of life than our pretty, flim- sy, pampered, and self-willed daughters of wealth and enervating luxury. These girls, he says, will make noble mothers, and happy are the sons whom they shall tenderly guide with affectionate severity and far-seeing love to a pure and vigor- ous manhood. Of course, distance has lent its enchantment to this picture and is, in part, responsible for its poetic tint. There is this to be said, on the other side, that a man has to make his choice among these girls largely on trust ; for, with all their virtues, they are a trifle insipid, until wifehood and motherhood have awakened their latent character- istics. They are distressingly alike, both in their outward type and in their senti- ments ; and they rarely develop an inter- esting individuality until after marriage, or after they have given up the expecta- tion of marriage. For the male species as we all know, are afraid of anything of definite complexion, preferring a mere personification of the venerable and tra- ditional qualities which are supposed to be inherent in the sex. The German 38 male would even count it a gain if lie could arrest all individual development in his wife for an indefinite period. And it is inevitable that this ideal of blank- ness, feebly tinted by a few traditional virtues, will be reflected in the mind and demeanor of German girlhood. For when the penalty of not conforming to this ideal is celibacy, women will strive to ap- pear what men want them to be. But, in spite of this effort at self -obliteration, there are women in Germany who are as pronounced personalities as Bismarck or Von Moltke. I recall one, the wife of a celebrated professor and political leader, with whose acquaintance I would not have dispensed for a small fortune. To see her sit at her table, tall, blond, and stately, surrounded by her sons and daughters, who loved and almost revered her, was a picture never to be forgotten. The father, though he was a man of ex- ceptional gifts and absorbed in public af- fairs, seemed to me almost dwarfed by his wife. Her sweet, maternal dignity, her innate courtesy, her easy flow of interest- ing conversation, made her seem to me the noblest type of a matron I had ever beheld, and she revealed to me, incident- ally, an ideal of family life which remains to this day something unattainable. Though she was the dominant force in the household, she deferred to her hus- band with a loving delight in submission which was beautiful to witness. She was proud of him and missed no opportunity to make her children proud of him. And she seemed utterly unconscious that she was herself exceptional, unless it were for her good-fortune in being the wife of such a husband and the mother of so many fine children. Let m.e add that she was intensely Prussian in sentiment, loyal to the core, and an admirer of Bismarck. If she had been a contemporary of Plutarch, he would have included her eventless life among his heroic biographies. My domestic critic, to whom I have read the above, declares her disapproba- tion in general, and calls my attention to the fact that all generalizations must con- tain a modicum of error. It is because I cheerfully grant this proposition that I finish this study of odious comparisons, not with a generalization, but with a por- trait. Whether I have succeeded in hold- ing the scales of international justice even I do not know ; nor do I pretend to be wholly unbiassed. But my prejudice (though you may find it hard to believe) is in favor of America and whatever is American. THE AMERICAN NOVELIST AND HIS PUBLIC i)T is said that poets are born, not made. The same asser- tion might be hazarded, with equal truth, of lawyers, engi- neers, doctors, and clergy- men ; in fact, of any man eminent in his profession. The great ones are born, the little ones are only made. Marked in- herited ability in a definite direction is, however, no sure guarantee of greatness. Circumstances must do the rest. The man is the resultant of his environment and his heredity; if they impel him in the same direction, he will get far ; if they push in opposite directions and counter- act each other, he may not get anywhere. The one is as important as the other. A man's heredity he has to accept as an un- alterable fact; he can do nothing to im- prove or modify it; though I believe the time will come when society will awake to a sense of its responsibility and pre- vent unions which must result in vicious or diseased offspring. As regards en- vironment, we have already accepted the responsibility. In our power to change and modify it so as to serve a definite purpose, we have, if not our own fates, at least those of our children, partly in our hands. Much is, of course, yet beyond our power of calculation ; but much, also, within it. The late Anthony Trollope's idea, that a young man could be trained to be a novelist, as he might for the legal or medical profession, is, therefore, not so absurd as it has been represented to be. Supposing the young man to be of a little more than average cleverness, he would have as good a chance of success in that field as in that of law or medicine. He could not, perhaps, go to work de- liberately accumulating experience, but he could, by a process similar to that which Goethe employed in his own con- scious self-development, educate himself by travel and study, and sharpen his fac- 43 ulties of observation. He might not be- come great by this process, but if success were conditioned by greatness, how many of us would indeed achieve it? That greatness may even be a barrier to success is demonstrated by the posthumous ce- lebrity of many an author, who asked for bread and received a stone. The public makes its authors in its own image and likeness. It demands a certain article and it gets it. The man who suits the average taste is the suc- cessful man. There is, to be sure, such a thing as educating your public; but the process is slow and expensive. The pub- lic which is capable of being educated is never very large, though it is apt to make up in devotion for what it lacks in numbers. The authors, however, who are satisfied with this limited renown are ex- ceptional ; the great majority of them hunger for popularity. For the attain- ment of this a benevolent chorus is an important aid. The journalistic friends of the novelist conspire to advertise him, in season and out of season, and treat his greatness as an article of faith ; and he, in return, pushes their fortunes when- ever the chance presents itself. If this were, however, the severest symp- tom of the hunger for popularity, it would be no serious matter; the influence of these little cliques is, after all, limited ; and there are plenty of reputations among us which have grown healthily without such artificial tending. But there are other forces at work, in our literature, which are more permanently injurious. Chief among these I hold to be the fact that the American public, as far as the novelist is concerned, is the female half of it. The readers of novels are chiefly young girls, and a popular novel is a novel which pleases them. If an Ameri- can author should attempt to write fiction for men, his books would share the fate of Rousseau's " Ode to Posterity," which never reached its address. The average American has no time to read anything but newspapers, while his daughters have an abundance of time at their disposal, and a general disposition to employ it in anything that is amusing. The novelist who has begun to realize that these young persons constitute his public, naturally endeavors to amuse them. He knows, in a general way, what ladies like, and as the success of his work depends upon his hitting their taste, he makes a series of small concessions to it, which, in the end, determines the character of his book. He feels that he is conversing with ladies and not with men, and his whole attitude, his style, and the topics he selects for dis- cussion, suffer the change which is im- plied in this circumstance. He discusses dress with elaborate minuteness, and en- ters, with a truly feminine enthusiasm, into the mysteries of the toilet. He shuns large questions and problems because his audience is chiefly interested in small questions and problems. He avoids everything which requires thought, be- cause, rightly or wrongly, thought is not supposed to be the ladies' forte. Their education has not trained them for inde- pendent reflection. They are by nature conservative, and have been told by their pastors and teachers that the so-called modern ideas are dangerous and improper to discuss. Accordingly, the novelist who 46 aspires for their favor becomes, also, con- servative, and refrains from discussing what, according to the boarding-school standard, is unsafe or improper. This silence concerning all the vital things of life, and the elaborate attention paid to things of small consequence, I be- lieve to be the most serious defect in the present American fiction. The strong forces which are visibly and invisibly at work in our society, fashioning our desti- nies as a nation, are to a great extent ig- nored by our novelists. Politics, for in- stance, which, outside of the great cities, plays so large a part in the lives of our people, is, out of deference to the ladies, rarely allowed to invade our novels. In all the tales of Howells and James, which are typical of the tendencies of the time, I do not remember a single political inci- dent — unless, indeed, the flirtations of the capricious Christina with the little socialistic bookbinder in Princess Casa- inassiina may be termed a political inci- dent. Mr. Marion Crawford had, to be sure, once the hardihood to advertise his misinformation concerning the politics of his native land in a book entitled An American Politician, but I doubt if he expected any one to take such a perform- ance seriously. J. W. De Forest pub- lished, some ten or twelve years ago, an excellent political novel, showing abun- dant insight; but Hojiest John Vane can scarcely have reaped the success it de- served, since the author soon afterwards abandoned the field of fiction, and has, as far as I know, never since been heard from. In Edward Eggleston's /?^-r)/ there are admirable episodes from the Harri- son and Tyler campaign of 1840, and in T/ie Hoosier Schoolmaster politics also holds its due proportion of space and interest. But these exceptions are suf- ficiently rare to prove the rule, that the novelist of to-day avoids politics. Of the anonymous novel, Democracy, I have not spoken, because it was not what it pur- ported to be — a characterization of life at our national capital — but a distorting and malevolent satire on it ; and Albion J. Tourgee's A Fool's Errand and Bricks Without Straw were so strongly colored by vindictive partisanship as to be cam- 48 paign documents rather than contribu- tions to literature. I am aware that it is ungracious, on the part of a man who has written novels, to find fault with those who have had the kindness to read his productions. It would be perfectly fair if they should an- swer him : " If we had not been your public you would have had none; if we had not bought your books they would have remained on the shelves of your publisher. Whatever you are, or pretend to be, in a literary capacity, you owe to us." As I have said, I am painfully aware that such a reply would be in or- der, and I scarcely know what to say to clear myself of the charge of ingratitude. My only plea is that I care more for American literature than for the small figure I may happen to cut in it. I con- fess I have never written a book without helplessly deploring the fact that young ladies were to be the arbiters of its fate ; that young persons whose opinions on any other subject, involving the need of thought or experience, we should proba- bly hold in light esteem, constitute col- lectively an Areopagus from whose judg- ments, in matters relating to fiction, there is no appeal. To be a purveyor of amuse- ment (especially if one suspects that he has the stuff in him for something better) is not at all amusing. To be obliged to repress that which is best in him, and offer that which is of slight consequence, is the plight to which many a novelist, in this paradise of women, is reduced. Nothing less is demanded of him by that inexorable force called public taste, as embodied in the editors of the paying magazines, behind whom sits, arrayed in stern and bewildering loveliness, his final judge, the young American girl. She is the Iron Madonna w^ho strangles in her fond embrace the American novelist ; the Moloch upon whose altar he sacrifices, willingly or unwillingly, his chances of greatness. In the vast majority of cases in which the chances do not exist, there is, of course, no sacrifice. But in the cases where they do exist there is a dis- tinct half-unconscious lowering of stand- ard, a distinct descent to a lower plane of thought or thoughtlessness. A weak 5° lemonade mixture, harmless and mildly exhilarating, adapted for the palates of ingenues, is poured out in a steady stream from our presses, and we all drink it, and, from patriotic motives, declare it to be good. When, however, we read a novel like ToXsioVs Ajina Karcjiina or Daudet's Le Nabab we appreciate, perhaps, the dif- ference between a literature addressed to girls and a literature intended for men and women. I am by no means blind to the fact that we have among us the beginning of what promises to be a sounder and more se- rious school of fiction. Mr. Howells de- serves, in my opinion, the thanks of all lovers of literature for his frank and fear^ less attacks, both by precept and example, upon the worn-out romantic ideals. As long as it is expected of the novelist that he shall spin ingenious and entertaining yarns, his art is not bound by the laws of reality, and is free to degenerate into all sorts of license. As long as a crude pub- lic taste found more pleasure in the ab- normal than the normal, the popular novelist was forced, like Wilkie Collins and Gaboriau, to ransack the records of police courts and lunatic asylums in search of startling incidents ; and the novel swarmed with villains and their victims. As a picture of life, such fiction was worse than worthless. It exists, of course, yet, and has a large public ; but it is, in great part, due to Mr. Howells that readers who lay claim to literary cult- ure are now beginning to repudiate it. His long series of novels in the Atlantic, the Century, and Harper s Magazine, have dealt uniformly with American themes, and have drawn within the domain of fiction hitherto unexplored types and phases of our national life. In A Hazard of New Fortunes and The Rise of Silas Laphain he has penetrated more deeply into the heart of reality, as it manifests itself on this side of the Atlantic, than any previous novelist, and has made it easier for those who shall follow after him to rely upon insight, style, and knowl- edge of the world for success, and to dispense with the crude devices of the sensationalist. If he has not, like Zola and Claretie in France, and Spielhagen and Freytag in Germany, undertaken to grapple with the social problems of the day, this may be in part due to a tem- peramental aversion for polemics, and partly to the training which the month- ly magazine gives to all its contribu- tors, keeping them in the safe track of un- contested generalities.* The editor, being anxious to keep all his old subscribers and secure new ones, requires of his con- tributor that he shall ofTend no one. He must not expose a social or religious sham, because there are hundreds, if not thousands, of subscribers who believe in this sham, and would stop the magazine if it were attacked. If he takes up a par- ticular phase of life, he must steer care- fully, so as to step on nobody's toes, and if he has extreme beliefs and convictions, take good care to keep them in proper restraint. I am not applying this to Mr. Howells, who is sufficiently outspoken in his convictions, but to every novelist * Since the above was written Mr. Howells has pub- lished Letters from Aliruria, in which he does show the keenest appreciation of the problems of American society. who reaches his public through the mC' dium of the monthly magazines. How- ev^er much he may rebel against it, he is forced to chew the cud of old ideas, and avoid espousing any cause which lacks the element of popularity. If he is of an ardent temperament, he must curb his ardor, except in the love-scenes, where he is permitted to be discreetly passionate. If, like so many of the world's best poets, he is in advance of his time; if he is a non-conformist in respect to any com- monly accepted practice or belief, he has but the choice of suppressing his convic- tions or remaining silent. He must oflfer that part of himself which he believes to be of small consequence, and conceal that which he believes to be important and vital. In all the countries of Europe, except England, the literary conditions are, in this respect, very different. There the monthly magazine (without which Ameri- can authorship scarcely could exist) has not attained the prominence or the devel- opment that it has reached in our pros- perous democracy. The majority of the German periodicals appeal to a definite class of readers, and are not afraid of proclaiming (in signed articles) the most tremendous social and religious here- sies. Publications lii