There is one other phase of the making of villains which deserves consideration. That is, their nationality.
Once you had only to know that the man who appeared at Chapter III., twirling his moustache and making polite speeches, was a French count or a Russian prince, to be sure that on him would fall the responsible post of chief villain during the rest of the story.
If the novel were written in America, an English lord could be added to the list. The titled foreigner, whatever he might be, was expected to try to elope with the heroine, for the sake of her money. The hero baffled him finally, and seized the opportunity, at the moment of bafflement, to deliver a few patriotic sentences on the general superiority of republican institutions.
This is all changed. We have had novels and plays with virtuous, even admirable, English lords. Once or twice members of the French nobility have appeared in another capacity than that of advance agent of wickedness. It is time to call a halt, or the first thing we know someone will write a book with a virtuous Russian prince in it.
The line must be drawn somewhere. The mission of Russia in English literature is to furnish tall, smooth, diabolical persons, devoted to vodka, absinthe, oppression of the peasantry, cultivation of a black beard, and general cussedness. We foresee that the novelists will soon have to draw upon Japan for their villains. Much ought to be made of a small, oily, smiling Oriental, who is nursing horrid plots beneath a courteous exterior.
At the time of the first performances of Mr. Moody's play "The Great Divide," it was pleasant to see that a sense of fitness in the nationality of villains had not entirely died out. It may be remembered that the first act represents an American man joining with a Mexican and a nondescript in an atrocious criminal enterprise. At least one newspaper had the sturdy patriotism to call the dramatist to account for insinuating that an American could possibly do such a thing.
"Furriners," perhaps, but Americans, never! Shame on you, Mr. Moody!
While so many of the chief characters of the old fiction have vanished, there is a chorus of minor ones who have also moved away.
Where, for instance, is the village simpleton? He was a useful personage, for he could be depended upon to make the necessary heroic sacrifice in the last chapter but one. When the church steeple burst into flames, or the dam broke and the flood descended on the town, or the secondary villain was tying the heroine's mother to the railroad track, the hero was holding the center of the stage and seeing that the heroine escaped in safety.