Booth Tarkington may have his ups and downs in future, as he has had in the past. "The Gentleman from Indiana" seemed to me to be almost one of the most tiresome books ever invented, while "Monsieur Beaucaire" was one of the most fascinating, charming. You can hardly find a better novel of American life than "The Turmoil," unless it is Judge Grant's "Unleavened Bread."
But the best novels of American life seem to be written in order to be forgotten. Who reads
"The Breadwinners" now? Or who, except the professional "teacher" of literature, recalls "Prue and I"? Or that succession of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe's novels, almost unequalled as pictures of a section of our life, each of which better expresses her talent than "Uncle Tom's Cabin"? The English and the French have longer memories. Mrs. Oliphant's "Chronicles of Carlingford"—some of us remember "Miss Majoribanks" or "Phœbe Junior"—finds a slowly decreasing circle of readers. And while "Sapho" is almost forgotten, "Les Rois en Exilé" and "Jack" are still parts of current French literature. But "Unleavened Bread" or "The Damnation of Theron Ware" or "Elsie Venner" or the "Saxe Holm's Stories" are so much of the past as to be unread.
To the credit of the gentle reader, Miss Alcott's stories perennially bloom. And, for some strange reason, the weird "Elsie Dinsmore" series is found under the popular Christmas tree, while nobody gives the Rollo books to anybody. Why? One may begin to believe that that degeneracy which the prevalence of jazz, lip-sticks, and ballet costumes adapted to the subway is supposed to in
dicate, is a real menace when one discovers that "Penrod" or "Seventeen" has ceased to be read!
We may read Mark Twain and wallow in vulgarity, but it is my belief that Sodom and Gomorrah would have escaped their fate, if a Carnegie of that time had made it possible to keep books like "Penrod" and "Seventeen" in general circulation!
It was once said of Anthony Trollope that as long as English men and women of the upper and middle classes continued to exist, he might go on writing novels with ever-increasing zest. And the same thing might be said of Booth Tarkington in relation to his unique chronicles of youth—that is, the youth of the Middle West, with a universal Soul. His types are American, but there are Americas and Americas. Usage permits us to use a term for our part of the continent to which our Canadian and South and Central Americans and Mexicans might reasonably object; but while the young Americans of Booth Tarkington are typically American, they personally could belong only to the Middle West. The hero of "Seventeen" would not be the same boy if he had been born in Philadelphia or New York or Boston. Circumstances would have made him different. The
consciousness of class distinction would have made him old before his time; and though he might be just as amusing—he would not have been amusing quite in the same way.
And this is one of the fine qualities of Mr. Tarkington's imaginative synthesis. He is individual and of his own soil; he knows very well that it is unnecessary to exaggerate or even to invent; he has only to perceive with those rare gifts of perception which he possesses. It all seems so easy until you try to do it yourself!
The state of mind of Penrod, when he is being prepared for the pageant of the "Table Round," is inexpressibly amusing to the adult reader; but no child can look on it as entirely amusing, because every child has suffered more or less, as Penrod suffered, from the unexplainable hardness of heart and dullness of mind of older people. Something or other prevents the most persecuted boy from admitting that his parents are bad parents because they force impositions which tear all the fibres of his soul and make him helpless before a jeering world. When Penrod has gone through horrors, which are nameless because they seem to be so unreasonable, he murmurs aloud, "Well, hasn't this