A History of American Literature Since 1870

by Fred Lewis Pattee

It must have been well after midnight when I felt the first vague uneasiness—the suspicion—that precedes a nightmare. I was half-conscious, dream-conscious of the actual—knew myself in that very room—wanted to get up. Immediately the uneasiness grew into terror, because I found that I could not move. Something unutterable in the air was mastering will. I tried to cry out, and my utmost effort resulted only in a whisper too low for any one to hear. Simultaneously I became aware of a Step ascending the stair—a muffled heaviness; and the real nightmare began—the horror of the ghastly magnetism that held voice and limb—the hopeless will-struggle against dumbness and impotence. The stealthy Step approached—but with lentor malevolently measured—slowly, slowly, as if the stairs were miles deep. It gained the threshold—waited. Gradually then, and without sound, the locked door opened; and the Thing entered, bending as it came—a thing robed—feminine—reaching to the roof, not to be looked at! A floor-plank creaked as It neared the bed;—and then—with a frantic effort—I woke, bathed in sweat; my heart beating as if it were going to burst. The shrine-light had died: in the blackness I could see nothing; but I thought I heard that Step retreating. I certainly heard the plank creak again. With the panic still upon me, I was actually unable to stir. The wisdom of striking a match occurred to me, but I dared not yet rise. Presently, as I held my breath to listen, a new wave of black fear passed through me; for I heard moanings—long nightmare moanings—moanings that seemed to be answering each other from two different rooms below. And then close to me my guide began to moan—hoarsely, hideously. I cried to him:—

"Louis!—Louis!"

We both sat up at once.

Like De Quincey, he lingers over the flavor of words, gathering them everywhere he may and gloating over them, tasting them with half-closed eyes like an epicure, and using them ever delicately, suggestively, inevitably.

For me words have color, form, character: they have faces, ports, manners, gesticulations; they have moods, humors, eccentricities;—they have tints, tones, personalities.... Surely I have never yet made, and never expect to make any money. Neither do I expect to write ever for the multitude. I write for beloved friends who can see color in words, can smell the perfume of syllables in blossom, can be shocked with the fine elfish electricity of words. And in the eternal order of things, words will eventually have their rights recognized by the people.

His essays, therefore, even as he has intimated, are for the few who are attuned to them, who have sense for delicate suggestion, for "the phosphorescing of words, the fragrance of words, the noisomeness of words, the tenderness, the hardness, the dryness or juiciness of words." Aside from his vision of beauty, his intensity, his suggestiveness of style, he has brought not much. The romancers of the period, a few of them, like Grace King, for example, have felt his influence, but it has not been a large one. He stands almost an isolated figure in his period, an intensely individual soul, a solitary genius like Poe. His place is a secure one. His circle of readers will never be large, but it will always be constant.

III

Another phase of French influence one finds in the work of Agnes Repplier, perhaps the leading writer of "the light essay"—the term is her own—in the later years of the period. Born of French parentage in Philadelphia, educated at a convent where prevailed French language and ideals, she was Gallic both by temperament and training. She was not influenced as Cable undoubtedly was influenced and Hearn: there is small trace in her essays of French style echoed consciously or unconsciously. The influence was deeper, it was temperamental and racial, manifesting itself spontaneously in the display of those literary qualities that we associate with the word "French." Her favorite reading was largely in the English. She read enormously and she read note-book in hand. She added, moreover, culture and impressions by much residence abroad, and when she began to write it was with rich store of material. She began deliberately and she worked like a true classicist, leisurely, with no genius, and no message to urge her on. Her delight it was to talk about her reading, to add entertaining episodes, to embroider with witty observation and pithy quotation or epigram. Save for the autobiographical study "In Our Convent Days," her writings mostly deal with the world of books.

Miss Repplier first came into notice in 1886 when one of her essays came to Aldrich, who was delighted with it and who made haste to introduce her to the Atlantic circle. Two years later came her first book, Books and Men, and since that time her essays, goodly in number and scattered through many magazines, have become a well-known feature of the times. Themes she takes to suit her fancy, apparently at random, though more often phases of her beloved "happy half century": "A Short Defense of Villains," "Benefits of Superstition," "The Deathless Diary," "The Accursed Annual," "Marriage in Fiction," and all other topics pertinent to Dr. Johnson's little world. She adds not much to our knowledge, and she comes not often to any new conclusions, but she is so companionable, so sparkling and witty, that we can but read on with delight to the end. We are in an atmosphere somehow of old culture and patrician grace, of courtliness and charm:

Thou mindest me of gentle folks—
Old gentlefolks are they—
Thou sayst an undisputed thing
In such a solemn way.

A little of feminine contrariness there may be, perhaps, at times. A thing has been generally disparaged: she will defend it. Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison may be mentioned: "I think, myself, that poor Sir Charles has been unfairly handled," she will retort. "He is not half such a prig as Daniel Deronda; but he develops his priggishness with such ample detail through so many leisurely volumes." And her protest becomes almost acrimonious if anything of the new be flippantly boasted of as superior to the old:

"We have long ago ceased to be either surprised, grieved, or indignant at anything the English say of us," writes Mr. Charles Dudley Warner. "We have recovered our balance. We know that since Gulliver there has been no piece of original humor produced in England equal to Knickerbocker's New York; that not in this century has any English writer equaled the wit and satire of the Biglow Papers."

Does this mean that Mr. Warner considers Washington Irving to be the equal of Jonathan Swift; that he places the gentle satire of the American alongside of those trenchant and masterly pages which constitute the landmarks of literature? "Swift," says Dr. Johnson, with reluctant truthfulness, "must be allowed for a time to have dictated the political opinions of the English nation." He is a writer whom we may be permitted to detest, but not to undervalue. His star, red as Mars, still flames fiercely in the horizon, while the genial luster of Washington Irving grows dimmer year by year. We can never hope to "recover our balance" by confounding values, a process of self-deception which misleads no one but ourselves.