Through the great interest felt by Englishmen in the manners and customs of Eastern nations, Oriental novels have become a recognized department of English fiction. In the eighteenth century, Johnson, in "Rasselas," and Beckford, in "Vathek," had drawn on the romantic features of Eastern life. In the present century successful attempts have been made to study Oriental character through the medium of the realistic novel. Hope, in "Anastasius," described the vices and degradation of Turkey and Greece in the person of his hero. In James Morier's "Hajji Baba of Ispahan" and "Ayesha," are vivid delineations of Eastern character and highly humorous sketches of Persian life. James Baillie Fraser, in "The Kuzzilbash," and Miss Pardoe in a number of tales, have still further enriched the department of Oriental fiction.
[206] Other women who have contributed to the English domestic novel—. Mary K. Mitford, Mrs. Crowe, Mrs. Marsh, Lady Georgiana Fullerton, Miss Kavanaugh, Geraldine Jewsbury, Mrs. Alexander, S. Bunbury, C. Sinclair, A. Strickland, M.C. Clarke, L.S. Costello, C. Crowe, A.H. Drury, S. Ellis, M. Howitt, Mrs. Hubback, Hon. Mrs. Norton, M.A. Power, E. Sewell, Mrs. Marquoid, Hesba Stretton, Florence Marryat, Elizabeth Wetherell, Sarah Tytler, C.C. Fraser-Tytler, C. Craik, Hon. Mrs. Chetwind, M.M. Grant, A.E. Bray, and others.
[207] "Pendennis," Chap. v.
[208] Many other well-known writers have contributed to the English domestic novel: Thomas Love Peacock, H. Coke, Samuel Philips, Angus B. Reach, Albert Smith, R. Cobbold, Edmund Yates, Thomas A. Trollope, Thomas Hardy, James Payn, George Augustus Sala, William Thornbury, the author of "The Bachelor of the Albany," Mortimer Collins, G.H. Lewes, Shirley Brooks, Douglas Jerrold, C. Crowley, T. de Quincey, S.W. Fullom, J. Hannay, W. Howitt, C. Mackay, G.J. Whyte-Melville, T. Miller, L. Ritchie, F.E. Smedley, J.A. St. John, M.F. Tupper, F.M. Whitly, F. Williams, C.L. Wraxall, and others.
[209] T.H. Lister, Marquis of Normanby, Lady Caroline Lamb, Countess of Morley, Lady Charlotte Bury, Lady Dacre, Mrs. Gore, Lady Blessington.
VI.
James Fenimore Cooper said in regard to the materials for American fiction: "There is a familiarity of the subject, a scarcity of events, and a poverty in the accompaniments that drive an author from the undertaking in despair." But the truth of this statement has been greatly modified, if not quite refuted, by the work of that great novelist and of several others who have succeeded him. It is true that American life presents less salient characteristics than that of Europe; that class distinctions are less marked; and that the energies of the nation are still so much confined to strictly utilitarian objects, that life moves along with unpicturesque sameness and evenness. But mankind remains equally complicated and equally interesting under whatever circumstances it may be placed. The vast extent of American territory and the infinite variety of its inhabitants afford material to the novelist which yet remains almost untouched. New England, New York, the Southern States, and, above all, the Great West, are rich in special customs, traditions, and habits of thought with which fiction has only begun to concern itself. The visitor to Washington cannot fail to be struck by the variety of men who jostle each other in that cosmopolitan city. The New England farmer, the New York banker, the Southern planter, the Western herder or grain merchant, the California mine-owner, the negro, and perhaps a stray visiting Indian chief, represent widely differing and highly interesting forms of life and opinion. Whenever native genius has cast aside foreign influence and has found inspiration in American traditions and institutions, the extent and richness of its literary material have been made manifest.
The earliest examples of fiction in the United States were tentative and lacking in originality. At the close of the eighteenth century, Charles Brockden Brown began the career of the first American novelist with "Wieland." His pecuniary necessities and the slight encouragement offered at that time to American authors made it impossible for him to afford the time and care essential to artistic finish. His novels are of an imaginative and psychological character, often interesting in parts from the intense mental excitement which they describe. They were much admired by the English novelist Godwin, whose works they resemble in intensity of conception and faultiness of execution. A novel called "Charlotte Temple," by Susanna Rowson, obtained a wide circulation in the beginning of the present century, due much more to its foundation on a notorious scandal than to its own literary merit. "Modern Chivalry; or the Adventures of Captain Farrago and Teague O'Reagan, his Servant"—a poor imitation of "Don Quixote"—as a satire directed against the Democratic party by H.H. Brackenridge. R.H. Dana's "Tom Thornton" and "Paul Felton" have little claim to attention beyond the excitement of their rather sensational stories.
But with the publication of "The Spy," Cooper opened a thoroughly national vein, and began a literary career which showed how little native genius need rely on foreign influence or on foreign subjects. He described the stirring events and the moral heroism of the American Revolution with patriotic sympathy and original literary power. He touched the romantic chords of that great struggle with a delicacy which met with a world-wide response. Not only did Americans feel that in Cooper's novels the picturesque and characteristic features of their country were delineated by a master-hand, but in almost every European land, translations of "The Spy," "The Pioneers," or "The Pathfinder," testified to the universal interest excited by the examples of simplicity, endurance, and sagacity which formed the subjects of Cooper's pen. In "The Pioneers," "The Last of the Mohicans," "The Prairie," "The Pathfinder," and "The Deer-slayer" figures the character of Leatherstocking, than whom no fictitious personage has a greater claim to interest. His bravery, resolution, and woodland skill make him a type of the hardy race who pushed westward the reign of civilization. The scenes among which he lived, the primeval forest, the great inland lakes, the hunter's camp, and Indian wigwam were described by Cooper with a fidelity and picturesqueness which will always give to his works a national value. Now that farms and manufacturing towns cover what a century ago was a trackless wilderness, where backwoodsmen and Indians shot bear and deer, it would be almost impossible for us to realize the previous condition of our now populous country were it not for the novels of Cooper. And this great writer not only described the wild aspect of American scenery and the hardly less wild features of pioneer character. He painted with equal skill the life of the American sailor, at a time when that life had an interest and excitement it no longer possesses. Long Tom Coffin, Tom Tiller, Bob Yarn, belonged to a period when the United Stales was a maritime country, before American enterprise and industry were shut off from the sea by legislative imbecility. No marine novelist has given a more life-like impression of a ship than Cooper, and none have excelled him in descriptions of the sea and in studies of those peculiar forms of human nature produced by life on the ocean. So long as Cooper confined himself to purely national subjects, his success was brilliant and continuous; but many of his works show the effect of misdirected talent, and have fallen into neglect.
The "Legend of Sleepy Hollow," and "Rip Van Winkle" are the specimens of American fiction most intimately associated with New York. In these stories the traditions and scenery of the Hudson River were treated by Washington Irving with all the richness of imagination and delicacy of expression of which he had so great a store. Some part of that romantic interest afforded to the traveller by the castles of the Rhine, has been imparted to the Hudson by the exquisite pages of the "Sketch Book." The stories of Nathaniel P. Willis and some of the novels of Bayard Taylor and of J.G. Holland also belong especially to New York.
At the head of New England, and, indeed, of American writers of fiction, stands Nathaniel Hawthorne. His three great works, "The Scarlet Letter," "The House of the Seven Gables," and "The Blithedale Romance," are the finest specimens of imaginative writing which American genius has yet produced. The interest of Hawthorne's novels lies almost entirely in their subtle and astute studies of the hidden workings of the human mind. His fictions are remarkable for their want of action. "The Scarlet Letter" can hardly be said to have a plot. The series of chapters which intervene between the exhibition of Hester Prynne on the scaffold and the voluntary self-exposure there of the Puritan minister, simply represent gradual changes from the first to the last situation of the principal characters. But narrative excitement was never Hawthorne's object, and the want of it is never felt by his reader. Each scene is an appropriate sequel to the last, and a natural introduction to the next. Each chapter has its special interest,—the analysis of a condition of mind, a dramatic situation, or a highly finished domestic picture. It is in the delineation of character and the study of human motives that Hawthorne's chief excellence as a novelist consists. Nothing can exceed the penetration and vividness with which such persons as Zenobia, in "The Blithedale Romance," and Holgrave, in "The House of the Seven Gables," are described. The homeward walk of the fallen young minister, in "The Scarlet Letter," when he had resolved to desert his flock and to connect himself again with Hester Prynne, is an unsurpassed delineation of sudden moral degeneration. There is nothing of modern realism in Hawthorne's novels, and yet they leave a realistic impression behind them. The greater number of his characters appear to us rather as representatives of certain mental conditions then as real flesh and blood. Neither in the dialogue, nor in what may be called the "properties" of his writing did Hawthorne strive at realistic effects. Still, when the reader lays down "The Scarlet Letter," or "The House of the Seven Gables," he insensibly feels himself embued with the spirit and atmosphere of Puritan New England. Hawthorne was so intensely a New Englander in his sympathies, prejudices, and habits of mind, that his writings were always colored by the thought and sentiment of his native land. In "The Scarlet Letter," there is little evidence of the use of historical researches, and yet in that volume, colonial life has been made real and actual to us by the very intensity of the author's national feeling.
New England fiction includes a number of other celebrated and honored names. Catherine M. Sedgwick began her literary career with "Hope Leslie," a story founded on the early history of Massachusetts, which was followed by "Redwood" and "The Linwoods, or Sixty Years Since in America." Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes studied New England village life in "Elsie Venner," and Sylvester Judd that of the Maine backwoods in "Margaret." Mr. T.W. Higginson has written "Malbone." Mr. W.D. Howells, Rev. Edward Everett Hale, and Miss E.S. Phelps are still adding to their reputations.
Among the novels relating to life in the Southern States, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is the most prominent. The circulation and fame of this book have been the most remarkable phenomenon in the annals of literature. Within a year, more than two hundred thousand copies were sold in the United States, and fully a million in England. Thirteen different translations were issued in Germany, four in France, and two in Russia; the Magyar language boasted three separate versions; the Wallachian, two; the Welsh, two; and the Dutch, two; while the Armenian, Arabic, Romaic, and all the European languages had at least one version. The book was dramatized in not less than twenty different forms, and was acted all over Europe. In France, and still more in England, all other books and all other subjects became, for the time, secondary to "Uncle Tom's Cabin." This extraordinary popularity was chiefly due to the importance and novelty of the subject treated. Mrs. Stowe imparted a considerable narrative interest to her work, and gave to her characters a very life-like effect. Her pathetic and humorous scenes are natural and well arranged. The peculiarities of negro life and habits of thought are placed before the reader with genuine sympathy and truth. Uncle Tom and Topsy are fine and original creations. But taken simply as a novel, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is not more remarkable than a hundred others, and cannot compete with such works as "Tom Jones," "Adam Bede," or "David Copperfield." Mrs. Stowe's extraordinary success was fully deserved, but it resulted less from the literary excellence of her work, than from the fact that when one great subject rose pre-eminent in the public mind, she was able to embody it in a popular and easily comprehended form. Gilmore Simms and John P. Kennedy have contributed largely to the novel of Southern life. Mr. G.W. Cable is now studying Louisiana characters, and Judge Tourgee the general condition of the South since the war.