Though the pastoral romance, as we notice, became more and more artificial, it always remained pure in tone. It centered itself in idealism and stood against the low, utterly debased, more realistic novella, which was its predecessor and continued rival for popularity. The pastoral held the field as the chief and most influential prose form in Spain until the picaresque romance came to be recognized as a distinct genre.
Suggestions for writing
To write a modern society story that will be worth while is no easy task; for here an author readily descends to banalities, and the class itself is hardly acceptable to the serious critic. Yet stories of this kind are so popular and form (I am sorry to say) so large a part of the reading of our young women—and our young men, too, for that matter—that the type surely has come to stay for sometime and must be taken account of. To make your story commendable, then, you will need to be original and striking in your choice of situation and to write with a succinctness and verve that will animate even the commonplace. Be careful not to be sentimental. If you touch on love, do so with dignity—with either clean, pure humor, or unaffected seriousness. Try hard to save your hero from being a cad. The namby-pamby, third-generation-millionaire protagonist, if not altogether uninteresting, is surely exasperating to a sensible reader. By playful imitation, you might write a good satire on this class of story. If you do so, you will need to be familiar with one or more of the popular examples in order to use them specifically. Or you might try your hand at a pastoral, just for the history of the thing. If you care to adhere to certain elements of the genre, you could put together under this guise allegorical scenes in which the present lords of the earth figure as weak or lusty shepherds piping a tune to the watch-dogs of war, the sheep of commerce, and the Goddess of Getting-On. If you wish to be more than half serious, you can find countenance in a number of our most recent light stories that undoubtedly turn toward the pastoral. This type, too, will give you a chance at a mixture of prose and verse. Here you can put in some of those fetching sylvan lyrics that you must have composed long before now and have always been afraid to mention.
The Fur Coat
Translated by Mrs. J. M. Lancaster. Copyright, 1903, by The Current Literature Publishing Company. Reprinted by permission.
Prof. Max Wiegand to Dr. Gustav Strauch
Berlin, November 20.
Dear Gustav—I have some news to tell you to-day which will certainly surprise you. I have separated from my wife, or rather we have separated from each other. We have come to an amicable agreement henceforth to live entirely independent of each other. My wife has gone to her family in Freiburg, where she will no doubt remain. I am for the present in our old house; perhaps in the spring I may look for a smaller house—perhaps not, for I can hardly hope to find so quiet a workroom as I now have, and the idea of moving appals me, especially when I think of my large library. You will, of course, want to know what has happened, though, to tell the truth, nothing has happened. The world will seek for all possible and impossible reasons why two people who married for love and who have for eleven years lived what is called happily together should now have decided to part. Yes, this world which thinks itself so wise, but whose judgments are nevertheless so petty, so superficial, will doubtless be of the opinion that there is something hidden—will include this case too in one of the two great categories prepared for such affairs, because it can not conceive of the fact that life in its inexhaustible variety never repeats itself and that the same circumstances may assume different aspects according to the character and disposition of those interested. I need not tell you this, my dear Gustav. You will understand how two finely organized natures should rebel against a tie which binds them together after they have once become fully convinced that in all matters of real importance a mutual understanding is possible.
My wife and I are too unlike. Between her views of life and mine there yawns an impassable gulf. The first few years I hoped to influence her, to win her to my ways of thinking—she seemed so docile, so yielding, took so warm an interest in my work, so willingly allowed herself to be taught by me. Not till after our children's death did she begin to change. Her grief at this loss—a grief which neither of us has ever been able to live down—matured her, made her independent of me. A tendency to morbid introspection took possession of her, and gave increased tenacity to those ideas and convictions which my influence had hitherto held in check, though not wholly eradicated. She plunged deeper and deeper into those mists of sentimentally fantastic imaginings, passionately demanding my concurrence in her views. She lost all interest in my professional work, evidently regarding the results of my researches in natural science as troops from an enemy's camp. At last there was hardly a subject in the wide realm of nature and human existence on which we agreed. To be sure we never came to an open quarrel, but the breach between us was constantly widening. Every day we saw more and more plainly that though we lived side by side, we no longer belonged to each other. This discovery irritated and distressed us, and at last forced all other feelings into the background. If we had not once loved each other so dearly, or even if we had now ceased to feel a mutual respect, this state of affairs might perhaps have lasted for years, but our ideas of the true meaning of marriage were too lofty, our sense of our own dignity as human beings too profound to permit us to be content with so incomplete a realization of our ideals. I hardly know who spoke first, but our resolution was at once taken, and the decisive words uttered as calmly and naturally as the overripe fruit falls from the tree. For the first time in many years we were able with perfect unanimity of sentiment to discuss a subject of the greatest importance to us both, and this fact alone soothed our overwrought nerves. We parted yesterday with the utmost decorum, without a word of reproach, a note of discord.
The many beautiful memories of our early married life, of the long years we had lived together, made it difficult to refrain from some manifestation of tenderness, and I assure you that I never felt greater respect for my wife than at the moment when, all petty considerations cast aside, the true magnanimity of her nature asserted itself. Her manner, what she said, and also what she did not say, robbed the situation of all trace of the commonplace, and gave it dignity. Deeply moved, almost in tears, we clasped hands in farewell, so we may look back upon the closing scene of our wedded life with unalloyed satisfaction.