There is a picture by Claude Monet,—pale, golden sunshine upon a misty sea. There is scarcely anything to be seen beyond this faint golden haze, resting upon the shimmering, transparent water, painted in rainbow colors, pale as opal. There is just a faint suggestion of a promontory, rising up from the warm, southern sea, and something which looks like a squadron of fishing boats in the far distance. It is not quite day, but it is already light,—one of those cool mornings which precede a dazzling day. It is years since last I saw this picture, but it charmed me so much that I have never forgotten it. It is in consequence of this same sense for fine shades of color, applied in this instance to the soul, that “Dilettantes” was written.
It is a very quiet book, and just as there is not a single strong color in Monet’s picture, so there is not a single high note in this book. We feel like gazing down into the water which glides and glides along, carrying with it seaweed, dead bodies, and men, but always in silence,—a most uneventful book. But beneath this almost lethargical stillness is enacted a tragedy in which a life is at stake, and the stake is lost, and death is the consequence. The deadliest blow against another’s soul is caused, not by words, but by deafness and indifference, by neglect at the moment when the heart yearns for love, and the bud is ready to blossom into flower beneath a single breath of sympathy. Next morning, when you go to look at it, you find it withered; it is then too late for your warm breath and willing fingers to force it open; you only make it worse, and at last the buds fall to the ground.
The famous unknown has called her book “Dilettantes,” although there is but one lady in it to whom the name applies. Can it be that, by her use of the plural, she meant to include herself with the heroine? The supposition seems not unlikely.
She introduces us to a colony of artists in Paris, amongst whom is Baron Mark Sebenyi, an Hungarian magnate, who is a literary dilettante. At the house of the old Princess Ebendorf he makes the acquaintance of her niece, Theresia Thaszary, and feels himself drawn towards her as his “twin soul.” During the Princess’s long illness, they become engaged, and when the Princess dies he continues his visits to the Countess as though her aunt were still alive, and he spends his hours of literary work in her house, because, as he says, her presence is an indispensable source of inspiration to him. Countess Resa is one of those whom a life of constant travel has rendered cosmopolitan. Her life is passed in a state of mental torpor which is more general, and, I should like to add, more normal, among young girls than men imagine or married women remember; she was neither contented nor discontented while she lived with her aunt, and she continues the same now, with Mark continually beside her. She is glad to have him with her; she feels a certain attraction in his manly and sympathetic presence, and his behavior towards herself is so decorous that it seldom happens that so much as a pressure of the hand passes between them. She knows that Mark has relations with other women, but that fact does not enter into her womanly consciousness at all.
All goes well until a fashionable friend of hers, a rather vulgar lady, asks her when she means to marry Mark, and persuades her to go into society, although she has no desire to do so, and is perfectly content with the sameness of her life. In society she finds that her friendship with Mark attracts observation, and this is the first shock which leads to an awakening. In the long winter hours, while she is sitting still in the room where he is writing, she suddenly realizes the situation, and feels that it is like a lover’s tête-à-tête. His behavior in society irritates her in a hundred little ways, because she knows that he is not true to his real nature, and that he gives way to his vanity as an author and poses in public. Mark has no intention of marrying her; he is quite content with matters as they stand. Cold-hearted, and probably aged before his time, he feels drawn towards her by a kind of distant, erotic feeling, and he seeks her society for the sake of the drawing-room where he can make himself thoroughly at home and bring his artist friends; he likes her because he is not bound to her, and he has never tired of her because she was never his.
Spring comes. They make expeditions round about Paris, and are constantly together; she is in a state of nervous excitement, and the more she feels drawn towards him the more she tries to avoid him. There are moments when he too feels his hand tremble, if by chance it comes into contact with hers. Their friendship with one another has become a hindrance to any greater friendship between them; and he is too much taken up with himself, too accustomed to have her always busily attending to him, to notice the change which is gradually taking place in her. Her love dwindles beneath the cold influence of doubt, which increases the more as she feels herself rejected by the man she loves. Ignorant though she be, she is possessed of an intuitive knowledge which is the heritage of many generations of culture, which enables her to read him through and through, until she conceives an antipathy for him,—the man whose love she desires,—an antipathy which makes him appear contemptible and almost ridiculous in her sight. Still she clings to him. She has no one else; she is alone among strangers. He belongs to her and she to him. This fact of their belonging to each other makes her tire of his company, and one day, when he and his literary friends are preparing to hold lectures in her drawing-room, she flies from the house to escape from their æsthetic chatter.
At last she can stand it no longer, and whilst her guests are engaged in discussing a work of Mark’s, she goes downstairs and out into the night. She scarcely knows what she is doing; her pulse beats feverishly, her nerves are quite unstrung. She walks down the street towards the Champs Elysées, and there she meets a man coming towards her. She perceives that she is alone in the empty street, and she is overcome with a nameless fear. Seized with a sudden impulse to hide herself, she jumps into the nearest cab, which is standing at the door of a café. The driver asks, “Where to?” and when she does not reply, he gets angry. At this juncture the man appears at the door of the carriage, and she recognizes Imre Borogh, a friend of Mark’s, who was on his way to call on her. She still cannot say where she wishes to go, but feeling herself under the protection of a friend, she allows him to get in. They drive and drive. She perceives the compromising nature of the situation, but is too stupefied to put an end to it. He talks to her after the manner of an emotional young man, whose feelings have gained the mastery over him. At last he tells the driver to stop in front of a café. She is half unconscious, but he assists her to get out. And the nervous strain of these many long months results in a misunderstanding with this stranger, even greater than would have been the case with Mark.
She comes very quietly home. She takes hold of Mark’s portrait, as she has so often done before, and compares it with her own image in the looking-glass. She throws it away. She burns his letters and all the little mementos which she has of him, then—while she is searching in her drawers—she comes upon a revolver....
Mark was very much moved at the funeral, and he cherished her memory for long afterwards.
Nowhere in the book is there any attempt made to describe men. The authoress only shows them to us as they are reflected in her soul. In this she not only shows an unusual amount of artistic talent, but also a new method. Woman is the most subjective of all creatures; she can only write about her own feelings, and her expression of them is her most valuable contribution to literature. Formerly women’s writings were, for the most part, either directly or indirectly, the expression of a great falsehood. They were so overpoweringly impersonal, it was quite comic to see the way in which they imitated men’s models, both in form and contents. Now that woman is conscious of her individuality as a woman, she needs an artistic mode of expression; she flings aside the old forms, and seeks for new. It is with this feeling, almost Bacchanalian in its intensity, that Mrs. Egerton hurls forth her playful stories, which the English critics judged harshly, but the public bought and called for in fresh editions; and this was how the Austrian lady wrote her story, which has the effect of a play dreamed under the influence of the sordine. Both books are honest. The more conscious a woman is of her individuality, the more honest will her confession be. Honesty is only another form of pride.