Some Modern Novelists, by Helen Thomas Follett and Wilson Follett. HENRY HOLT & COMPANY, 1918. The chapter deals with Mrs. Wharton’s work up to and including Summer. Her novel, The Valley of Decision, is singled out for especial emphasis.
Edith Wharton, A Critical Study, by Katharine Fullerton Gerould. Booklet published by D. APPLETON & COMPANY, 1922. A spirited exposition of what are conceived to be Mrs. Wharton’s special qualities by a woman whose interest lies particularly in Mrs. Wharton’s material.
21. The Unclassified Case of
Christopher Morley
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TO know Christopher Morley is to be interested, amused, enthusiastic, sceptical or even secretly puzzled; but to have him for a friend is to learn the meaning of friendliness in a degree that is very exceptional. And few escape being his friends, though this is less true than formerly. There was, indeed, once a time when the friendship of Morley was among the two or three serious responsibilities of an individual’s life—like marriage, or filial duty or a conscience in regard to one’s chosen craft. Practically every day, sometimes twice in a day, the evidence of Morley’s friendliness would appear in a brief letter or hastily-penned note about this or that or the other thing under the sun.
An image arose of an ever-active, a sleepless mind; of an emotional nature more unresting than the Atlantic and quantitatively as great. This awful abstraction slowly faded out into a visual image of a “burly” man with a smiling face and a lighted pipe, and that, in turn, gave place to the fear lest so much confidence in the human race should prove fatally misplaced.... Somewhat, it has; but what we didn’t foresee was that the change, coming about gradually, would operate as a gradual salvation of (1) his friends from Morley, (2) Morley from his friends, (3) Morley’s work from Friend Morley.
Yet this beneficial and important transformation has been accomplished in the most salutary manner, with a result that may accrue with permanence and advantage to American literature.
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Christopher Morley