AN AMERICAN NOVEL
Clark’s Field, by Robert Herrick. [Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston.]
It was but the other day that Mr. Herrick told us what he thought about the American novel. Those who read the trenchant article found not only a criticism of our machine-like fictionists and their half-baked methods, but also a sturdy conviction that the day was surely approaching when we should demand and receive a truer and more vital presentation of our national life in our literature. And if Mr. Herrick, long since tagged an apostate to our national creed of turgid optimism, believes this, we can safely trust to his cool vision and be glad that the tide has turned. The rich human material lies ready at hand, and the audience is fast growing intelligent and discriminating. As yet, however, “we await the writer or writers keen enough to perceive the opportunity, powerful enough to interest the public in what it has been unwilling to heed, and of course endowed with sufficient insight to comprehend our big new world.”
Whatever may be said for our other novelists, surely not one of them can exhibit a mingling of the powers of insight and artistry equal to that of Robert Herrick. His work from the beginning has been an honest and incisive attempt to interpret our life in its peculiar and universal aspects, in spite of the clamor of the public at his tearing away of the veils of sentimentality and prudery. The errors into which he fell were due to the ardor of his spiritual vision, which drove him into an impassioned taking of sides. He has emerged from that stage into what his critics call his “old manner,” a more objective treatment of his material. But in the process of change something was lost—the element of flaming intensity which gave the reader a similar capacity to feel. In this latest performance, as well as in One Woman’s Life, he is always cool, clear-sighted, and admirably efficient in the task he sets himself; but never passionate. On the contrary, despite the pervading atmosphere of earnestness, he often assumes a playful satiric tone, mordant but not bitter,—a method well suited to his matter and purpose.
Clark’s Field tells the story of the influence of property upon the human beings who own it and hope to reap gold from its increasing value. All that is left of the great Clark farm is a fifty-acre field in a growing New England town, bequeathed jointly to the two brothers, Edward and Samuel, the former of whom has emigrated to the West and wholly disappeared from the ken of his relatives. So at first the tale is of the baleful influence of expectation delayed again and again: in the case of Samuel who cannot sell the land because of his brother’s half-interest, and who in consequence sinks into a sodden inertia; in his son’s disintegration into a lazy and drunken “Vet”; in his sister Addie’s sordid and pathetic sally into life resulting in the birth of another human being destined to taste of the fruit of their tree and to find it, one day, very bitter.
The greater portion of the novel, then, deals with the influence of the realized wealth upon the unformed, colorless little girl, Adelle, the last of the Clarks. It is a masterly piece of work—the gradual development of the pale rooming-house drudge into the silly and insolent woman of fashion, and slowly but certainly into a human being with a soul. Less promising stuff for a heroine neither fate nor Mr. Herrick could have chosen; the latter delights in ample admissions throughout the book of Adelle’s lack of beauty, brains, and charm. Yet he is always sufficiently temperate to escape the danger of caricature. Adelle is a convincing figure. The slow dawning upon her consciousness of the power of money, her “magic lamp” which she need only rub to gratify any desire, is followed by swift and constant use of the new weapon. It brings her a fresh assurance, a few scatter-brained friends, some stylish clothes, and, at length, a callow youth for a husband. It never brings her contact with a real person or friendship with a stimulating individual; nor can it save her from the failure of her marriage, nor compensate her for the death of her little boy.
Adelle’s story, then, turns out to be what we least expected it,—a hopeful one. It leaves us with almost a sense of security, for is she not one of those who can “derive good from her mistakes,” and therefore “the safest sort of human being to raise in this garden plot of souls”? And although we are still saddled with “that absurd code of inheritance and property rights that the Anglo-Saxon peoples have preserved from their ancient tribal days in the gloomy forests of the lower Rhine,” the situation is not without hope, since it has yielded a man of the judge’s type, in whom the beauty of a past idealism is coupled with the freshness of a new vision of responsibility.
To hark back to the recent article in The Yale Review, we believe that Mr. Herrick himself has given us an American novel—thoroughly American in situation, character, treatment, and even in philosophy. We, as a people, are beginning to suspect our boastful optimism as we become aware of the sordidness beneath the fair exterior of our glorious civilization. And in accordance with the western temperament, the awareness of wrong leads not to bitter cynicism but to sturdy efforts toward amelioration. Such, then, is the spirit of Clark’s Field—a hopefulness in the power of courage, and labor, and a growing sense of social responsibility to move mounds that seem to have become immovable mountains through a tenacious fostering of tradition.
—Marguerite Swawite.
THE “SAVAGE” PAINTERS
Cubists and Post Impressionism, by Arthur Jerome Eddy. [A. C. McClurg and Company, Chicago.]
An attempt to explain the new schools in art “in plain, every-day terms.” An earnest appeal for tolerance in regard to seemingly perversive forms. The book has a wealth of material and numerous quotations from Picasso, Picabia, Cézanne, Matisse, and others, considerably more interesting and instructive than Mr. Eddy’s own truisms. Although the author repeatedly resents any accusation in his adherence to Cubism, the reader gets the impression that the Cubistic movement has received a more thorough and fair treatment than the other new schools. Of the sixty-nine reproductions of Post-Impressionistic paintings and sculpture, only five represent the Futurists. Idillon Redon, who gave us the greater delight in last year’s International Exhibition, is totally ignored. Among the Self-Portraits that of Matisse is sorely missed—a work that helps greatly in understanding the quaint painter of the Woman in Red Madras. Whether Mr. Eddy will succeed in convincing the prejudiced conservatives is doubtful; but in those who have appreciated the daring attempts of the new schools his book will arouse a renewed longing for the foreign “savages” and an ardent hope for their further invasions in our “sane and healthful” galleries.