Mrs. Wharton’s stories, even more than those of Mr. James, describe a social life which has taken its tone largely from an older and more conventional society, which has lost its moral simplicity in the complexity of an age of highly organized luxury, and which has taken on the easy ways of a social life that is entirely comfortable in conscience so long as it feels itself secure in matters of taste. In art Mrs. Wharton is an expert by intuition and practice. The author of “The House of Mirth” is analytical, and secures her most striking effects, not by boldly projecting her characters on a large canvas, but by uncovering their most elusive moods, their obscure motives, the conflict of temperament, character, and social traditions.
Such a power of lighting up hidden processes of thought as Mrs. Wharton possesses needs the reënforcement of an art which is both vigorous and sensitive; and this art is always at Mrs. Wharton’s command. She has both precision and delicacy. She can draw a character in detachment with such vitality of insight and of portraiture that it holds the attention without the aid of accessories; or she can sketch a cross-section of society with convincing energy of stroke. She is the recorder of a highly sophisticated society, more or less relaxed in tone and corrupted by luxury.
MARGARET DELAND’S HOME IN BOSTON
Mrs. Deland’s method is broader and her emotions of wider interest. She has painted one portrait which the whole country loves. Dr. Lavender has taken his place in the small group of imaginary Americans who are as real as historical Americans. He is a type dear to Americans, because his nature is sweet without a touch of weakness, his vision clear without hardness, his moral perception relentlessly keen but never divorced from pity and sympathy, and his humor fresh and abounding. And Mrs. Deland has also the gift of construction, and has written two or three novels which must be counted among our best fiction.
MARGARET DELAND WRITING IN HER LIBRARY.
HER DOG “ROUGH” SITS BY
No list of contemporary American writers of fiction would be complete without the names of F. Hopkinson Smith, John Fox, Jr., Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, and Miss Mary Johnston. Mr. Smith has gained skill as a writer steadily as he has gained skill as a painter; and in the small group of stories which bear his name two or three are likely to be read for a long time to come. “The Fortunes of Oliver Horn” shows Mr. Smith’s art at his best, for it is art of the heart as well as of the brain and hand. His romance has permanent elements of human nature; idealism, loyalty, and love are the soul of it.
Mr. Fox, who also finds his characters largely in the South, has drawn the picture of the primitive mountain types in the Kentucky hills with the charm which comes from great simplicity and from an intimate knowledge of the people he describes.