Who, writing in French or in any language, outre-mer, does better, or as well, as Holliday?
And where is the peer of Charles S. Brooks in "Hints to Pilgrims"? "Luca Sarto," the best novel of old Italian life by an American—since Mrs. Wharton's "Valley of Decision"—proved him to be a fine artist. He perhaps knew his period better psychologically than Mrs. Wharton, but here there's room for argument. Mrs. Wharton, although she is an admirable artist, grows indifferent and insular at long intervals.
"Luca Sarto" dropped like the gentle rain from heaven; and then came "Hints to Pilgrims." This I wanted to write about in the Yale Review, but the selfish editor, Mr. Cross, said that he preferred to keep it for himself!
"Hints to Pilgrims" is the essence of the modern essay. Strangely enough, it sent me back to the "Colour of Life" by the only real précieuse living in our world to-day, Alice Meynell; and I read that with new delight between certain paragraphs in Brooks's paper "On Finding a Plot." Why is not "Hints to Pilgrims" in its fourteenth edition? Or why has it no claque? The kind of claque that is so common now—which opens suddenly like a chorus of cicadas in the "Idylls of Theocritus"? After all, your education must have been well be
gun before you can enjoy "Hints to Pilgrims," while for "Huckleberry Finn" the less education you have, the better. Mr. Brooks writes:
Let us suppose, for example, that Carmen, before she got into that ugly affair with the Toreador, had settled down in Barchester beneath the towers. Would the shadow of the cloister, do you think, have cooled her Southern blood? Would she have conformed to the decent gossip of the town? Or, on the contrary, does not a hot colour always tint the colder mixture? Suppose that Carmen came to live just outside the Cathedral close and walked every morning with her gay parasol and her pretty swishing skirts past the Bishop's window.
We can fancy his pen hanging dully above his sermon, with his eyes on space for any wandering thought, as if the clouds, like treasure ships upon a sea, were freighted with riches for his use. The Bishop is brooding on an address to the Ladies' Sewing Guild. He must find a text for his instructive finger. It is a warm spring morning and the daffodils are waving in the borders of the grass. A robin sings in the hedge with an answer from his mate. There is wind in the tree-tops with lively invitation to adventure, but the Bishop is bent to his sober task. Carmen picks her way demurely across the puddles in the direction of the Vicarage. Her eyes turn modestly toward his window. Surely she does not see him at his desk. That dainty inch of scarlet stocking is quite by accident. It is the puddles and the wind frisking with her skirt.
"Eh! Dear me!" The good man is merely human. He pushes up his spectacles for nearer sight. He draws aside the curtain. "Dear me! Bless my soul! Who is the lady? Quite a foreign air. I don't remember her at our little gather
ings for the heathen." A text is forgotten. The clouds are empty caravels. He calls to Betsy, the housemaid, for a fresh neckcloth and his gaiters. He has recalled a meeting with the Vicar and goes out whistling softly, to disaster.
You do not find delightful fooling like this every day; and there is much more of it. Take this: