“‘The house doesn’t leak anywhere. I think it will be safe for you to take them off until after breakfast.’”
Now this is excellent humorous writing and Mrs. Burnham’s novels are filled with it, even her Christian Science novels, perhaps those particularly; it is so good simply because she has most thoroughly assimilated her material before starting to write. How many writers more famous than she, more gifted, possibly, from a critical standpoint, would have made a sorry failure of such books as Jewel and The Right Princess we don’t care to think. But you may see the disaster any day in the case of writers like Winston Churchill, engrossed by certain political and ethical ideals, and Ernest Poole, whose fine novel The Harbor failed of the highest rank simply because he had not assimilated the sociological ideas which he wished to present through his characters. It is continually happening, this effort of the good artist to handle material he has not mastered; and as surely as he essays the task he leaves his place as a novelist to mount the pulpit of the preacher, the rostrum of the reformer, the soapbox of the agitator—and a fine story is spoiled beyond all salvaging.
But when Mrs. Burnham writes of Christian Science beliefs, ideas and mental attitudes she is not writing primarily to lay those things before the reader. She is writing to tell a story. These are the elements of her story. From them she weaves her web of fancy but they are the colors and not the pattern.
In the depiction of character, notably the strongly accentuated characters of New England, Mrs. Burnham is unfailingly and admirably successful. The Opened Shutters lends itself from the start to the happy illustration of this faculty. Who more accurately observed and justly reported than Miss Lacey, Judge Trent and John Dunham? Miss Lacey meets the judge’s housekeeper, old Hannah, and exclaims:
“‘I just met Judge Trent, Hannah. Dear me, can’t you brush that hat of his a little? It looks for all the world like a black cat that has just caught sight of a mastiff.’”
Martha Lacey’s attitude toward Judge Trent is summed up in the refrain continually sounding at the back of her head:
“‘If I’d married him, he’”—would have done so and so or wouldn’t have done something else. No two ways about that! The consciousness of this stern and immutable fact is what makes Judge Trent’s life one long sensation of relief at having been refused.
“The judge softly closed the door behind her. ‘There, but for the grace of God,’ he murmured devoutly, ‘goes Mrs. Calvin Trent.’ Then he returned to his desk, put on his hat, and sat down at his work.”
Plots? There are hundreds of writers who can build twenty-story plots with express elevator service and private subway stations. There aren’t so many who can see people clearly and see them whole and set them down brightly on paper. Mrs. Burnham’s novels will be widely read and enjoyed for so long as she writes them and afterward for many a day.