How to study "The best short stories"

by Blanche Colton Williams

MR. EBERDEEN’S HOUSE

Starting Point and First Processes. “Mr. Eberdeen’s House” was to have been originally only the effect of an old New England House upon a New Englander who had become rather enfranchised from his austere beginnings, and returned to find them only more crabbed, more grim, than ever, and himself strangely, inexplicably connected with them. The explanation of how he was connected with this distasteful setting, and of why it was distasteful to him evolved the author’s theme. The hero’s great-grandmother had fled from the same grimness and straight-lacedness and puritanism by running away with a Frenchman, just before the birth of her child, of whom Mr. Eberdeen was, contrary to his bleak, orthodox suspicions, the father. The author’s plan was to have Mr. Eberdeen, representing all that was distasteful to the hero (Hastings) in the New England character, the hero’s ancestor without his knowing it—the great-grandmother after she had fled, having presumably taken the name, for herself and child, of Tremaine.

The ghosts seemed to Mr. Johnson the only media through which to tell the story pictorially. Whether one believes ghosts in a story real or not is, in his opinion, beside the point, so long as they seem real enough for the sake of the telling. They may be compared to the deus ex machina of Euripides, of to the scenes in motion pictures which show what some one is dreaming or thinking.

Analysis of the Developed Story. Some inner stories may be detached from the outer husk as a letter is drawn from its envelope (find examples in these collections). Others are a necessary part of the external interest and refuse to be separated without damage to each. This story is one of the latter sort.

Jack Hastings and Julia Elliott are betrothed. He has come to New England, after some time in Paris, to make her a visit. It is understood, at the end of the action, that they will go abroad to live. So much for the outer wrappings which are bound so closely to the heart of the matter, as is indicated in the

Preparation for the Significant Part, or the Inner Story: Jack’s mystic knowledge of “Mr. Eberdeen’s” house; his strange mood; “they talked of it bein’ ha’nted.” These details are followed by the more immediate preparation; Jack is ill and sleepy, he sleeps. (Or does he sleep?)

Here, then, the outer story merges, by way of Jack as a medium, with the inner.

Dramatic Climax of the Entire Story: (Formed by the developed scene which constitutes the inner action.)

Explanation: The characters are Jack Hastings, his counterpart, and the woman. Jack in his dream or vision apparently represents in his thoughts part of the personality of his great-grandfather; the ghostly counterpart represents that ancestor as he really behaved, at what must have been the original enactment of the scene. (Except, of course, that Jack was absent from that drama, played long before his birth.) This unique treatment of dual personality should be studied with Markheim, William Wilson, Jekyll and Hyde. For daring and yet naturalness combined with mysticism, it surpasses them. The end of the scene, in Jack’s vision, shows the ancestor about to do violence to his wife (Jack’s great-grandmother), but restrained by Jack himself. (Interpreted, this is to say that the better nature of Jack’s ancestor had actually triumphed and he had rushed from his wife.)

The Climax of Action (Whole of the Story): Jack Hastings awakes to find that he has been ill. He lies in a state of semi-realization, of semi-lapse into the world of his recent adventure.

Dénouement: Julia and Hastings plan to live abroad. The old man whom Jack had met appears and suggests that he saw the lady of the house go from it to meet Henry. (Is this old man a figment of the fancy or is he real?) In this addition to Jack’s vision is furnished the dénouement of the inner story, Julia leads Jack to Mr. Eberdeen’s room, which proves to be the one wherein he had seen the ghostly drama. The original of “John” is the portrait Julia had hung upon the panel. Julia reveals that when Jack came downstairs he had looked like the portrait. Clinching the reality of the whole thing is the discovery of the gray chiffon, with the bloodstains.

Comment. This, then, is a narrative the mystery of which must be explained by each reader to his own satisfaction. If the reader “believes” in the supernatural, he will take the whole thing, ghostly scene and all, as somehow occurring. If he does not “believe,” he will then accept the scene as the obsession of a sick man—with a few details left in mystery. I should class it as a story of the supernatural, wherein the appearance is visible to the sick or the clairvoyant mind. Knowing that the germinal idea had to do with the effect of a house upon a man, and that the story is developed by emphasis on this feeling, deepened by a ghostly visitation, one would find it impossible to characterize the story as other than one of atmosphere. And it is the best atmosphere story in the four Yearbooks. The right way to achieve an atmosphere story, Stevenson told us long ago, is to begin with a mood induced by a place; Mr. Johnson has pursued the plan.

Atmosphere is, then, bound up with setting; plot interest follows in importance; character is of note mainly in the unique manifestation of dual personality. A dreamer, an artist, an idealist—any sensitive medium—would fittingly play the part demanded. The love interest enriches the action and humanizes the character.