Mr. James has been a fairly prolific writer, of constantly increasing subtlety and attention to finish. His first stories, curiously enough, revealed a romantic, at times even sensational, bent, which he soon outgrew. His first novel, “Watch and Ward” (1871), was promising but not otherwise significant; “Roderick Hudson” (1875) was quite equal to the best of his later work, combining profound analysis of character with perhaps more sentiment than appears in his later works. It is a study of the artistic temperament in the person of a young American sculptor who is taken to Italy by a rich virtuoso. The story deals with two favourite studies of Mr. James: the contrast between Americans and the older races with which they come into contact in Europe, and the contrast between the artistic and the prosaic person. The first of these contrasts forms the subject of “A Passionate Pilgrim” (1875), including that exquisite story “The Madonna of the Future,” of “The American” (1877), and of “Daisy Miller, a Comedy” (1878), in which a burlesque element is noticeable. From the year 1875, then, may be said to date the “international novel” of comparison or contrast, which has become so immensely popular. In “The Europeans” (1878), the scene changes to Boston and the author shows how the life of the Puritans appears to foreign visitors. Other international studies are found in “An International Episode” (1879), “The Portrait of a Lady” (1881), one of his most popular longer novels, and “The Siege of London, The Pension Beaurepas, and The Point of View” (1883). In 1880 (dated 1881) appeared “Washington Square,” a quiet story laid in a formerly aristocratic quarter of New York; the tale has been called “a miracle in monotone.” Then came “The Bostonians” (1886), which Professor Richardson speaks of as typically “long, dull, and inconsequential, but mildly pleasing the reader, or at times quite delighting him, by a deliberate style which is enjoyable for its own sake, by a calm portraiture which represents the characters with silhouette clearness, and by some very faithful and delicately humorous pictures of the life and scenery of Eastern Massachusetts.” “The Princess Casamassima” (1886) continues the career of an American adventuress, Christina Light, who has figured in “Roderick Hudson,” to which it thus forms a kind of sequel. Less read than some others, it is one of the most remarkable of Mr. James’ stories. In 1888 appeared “The Aspern Papers, and Other Stories” and “The Reverberator,” a comedy of manners recalling “The American,” and dealing with the incompatibility between the cultivated and the vulgar relatives of two lovers and with the odious violation of private life by modern journalism. “The Tragic Muse” (1890), a study of a psychological problem of art and love, is complicated and difficult in the extreme; a friend expressed a sound view of it to Mr. James: “I will say it is your best novel if you promise never to do it again,” probably meaning that the extreme limit of elaboration had been reached. Three collections of stories, “The Lesson of the Master, and Other Stories” (1892), “The Real Thing, and Other Tales” (1893), and “Terminations” (1895), include various comic sketches, with some preciosities, and a well-told ghost-story, “Sir Edmund Orme,” the motif of which was later repeated in “The Turn of the Screw” (1898), a horrible, nerve-racking tale. “The Other House” (1896) is a highly dramatic, even sensational, story of passion, culminating, strange to say, in a murder; yet Rose Armiger is Mr. James’ one supremely passionate woman. In 1897 were published “The Spoils of Poynton” and “What Maisie Knew,” the latter a rather unpleasant story of domestic unhappiness and sordid intrigue; Maisie being a little girl whose life was spent alternately in the company of divorced parents, equally guilty, each of whom had remarried. “In the Cage” (1898) is a tissue of shrewd guess-work woven by a lively telegraph girl who becomes interested in the love affair of two others. “The Two Magics” (1898) includes “The Turn of the Screw” and “Covering End,” a pleasant comedy about an English country house. “The Awkward Age” (1899) is a unique example of subtle, often elusive, analysis of character—of character which some might say was not worth analysis, with unimportant incidents and little action. “The Soft Side” (1900) is a collection of studies of abnormal character and curious psychical phenomena, in which the rhythm of the prose is at times remarkable for its suggestiveness. “The Sacred Fount” (1901) is a fanciful sketch dealing with the idea of youth as a rejuvenator of age. “The Wings of the Dove” (1902) has been called the most remarkable book that Mr. James has written. It is a long story of the old warfare between the flesh and the spirit, in which the unseen forces from another world play an unlooked-for part. Mr. James’ most recent stories are “The Better Sort” (1903), “The Ambassadors” (1904), and “The Golden Bowl” (1905).
It is difficult to sum up in a few words the leading traits of Mr. James. It is easy to speak of him as reeling off volumes of abstruseness in which the petty ambitions of worthless Americans are analysed with a minuteness like that in which the leisurely student of anatomy delights; but such innocuous “criticism” does not even touch Mr. James. Undoubtedly it has been increasingly hard of late years to follow him; his later stories, with their proneness to excessive psychological delving, have a certain analogy to Browning’s later poems, which became harder to follow. But judged by his best works, such as “Roderick Hudson,” “The Princess Casamassima,” and “The Other House,” he must be pronounced a great artist, a keen analyst of the small section of life and the few types of character which he has chosen to study (and if one does not care for the types, one may still recognise the art with which they are presented); and as always a loyal American. He is not a master of style; yet at his best he embodies certain qualities of supreme excellence in style—ease, intimacy, suggestiveness, lucidity, sincerity. He is never a preacher, nor is he ever the mere idler and dilettante. He is very much in earnest; and in consequence the moral effect of his exposition of life is wholesome. “Out of the corruption,” says Miss Cary,[16] “of a society which Mr. James depicts with unsparing detail and without satire or didactic comment, rises the flame of purity. Some one among his characters is sure to stand for invincible goodness.” If the language of his later books becomes unintelligible, it will of course be a pity; but it seems quite unlikely that the great works of his middle period will soon cease to have a large body of appreciative and delighted readers.
Edward Eggleston.—The Hoosier life of southern Indiana has been described by Edward Eggleston (1837–1902). A native of Vevay, Indiana, he received only a brief school education, but taught himself several languages. He first became (1857) an itinerant Methodist minister in southern Indiana and then for nine years was a Bible Society agent in Minnesota. From 1866 till 1879, he was engaged partly in journalism and partly in a Brooklyn pastorate; then he retired to his country place on Lake George to devote himself entirely to literature.
His first book to win attention was “The Hoosier Schoolmaster” (1871), which first appeared as a serial in Hearth and Home. Having read Taine’s “Art in the Netherlands,” he says, he proceeded to apply Taine’s maxim, that an artist ought to paint what he has seen. The result was so faithful a picture that in spite of its faults it has a permanent value as a record of one phase of early Western life. Dr. Eggleston also wrote “The End of the World” (1872), which deals with the Millerites, who in 1842–3 proved by the Book of Daniel that the end of the world was at hand; “The Mystery of Metropolisville” (1873); “The Circuit Rider, a Tale of the Heroic Age” (1874), in which he drew on his own early experiences; “Roxy” (1878), a story of picturesque incident and character development laid in the time of the Tippecanoe campaign of 1840; “The Graysons, a Story of Illinois” (1888), a realistic picture of pioneer life in which Abraham Lincoln figures as a character; “The Faith Doctor” (1891), which deals with Christian Science and kindred phenomena in New York, and which shows the influence of Mr. Howells; and “Duffels” (1893), a collection of stories.
Dr. Eggleston himself spoke of his attitude in literature as a constant struggle “between the lover of literary art and the religionist, the reformer, the philanthropist, the man with a mission.” We are not of course surprised to find an editor of The Sunday School Teacher making his moral too prominent. But while this mars much of his work, his novels may still be said to be fresh and genuine transcripts of life.
Julian Hawthorne.—Julian Hawthorne (born in 1846) inherited literary ability from his father, the romancer. As an infant he was delicate; at seven his health was good, but having been kept out of school he could neither read nor write. Entering Harvard in 1863, he became known as an all-around athlete. After leaving Harvard without graduating, he lived in Dresden for some years, then returned to America and became a hydrographic engineer in New York. In 1871 he began to win attention to his short stories, and since 1872 has devoted himself to literature and journalism, living successively in Dresden, London, and New York. “Bressant,” his first novel, published in Appleton’s Journal in 1872, is somewhat crude and not without sensational elements, but holds the interest. Then came “Idolatry” (1874), which, though rewritten in whole or in part seven times, is now unknown, “Garth” (1877), a long story of New Hampshire, the chief part being a painter’s love-story, “Sebastian Strome” (1880), a study of the chastening of a selfish character, strongly reminding us of “Adam Bede,” “Dust” (1883), a story of extreme self-sacrifice, “Fortune’s Fool” (1884), “Archibald Malmaison” (1884), a novelette, and “Beatrix Randolph” (1884). In general his stories are not pleasant reading. Impossible characters are not infrequent and there is a tendency toward the choice of morbid subjects. Many descriptive passages, however, are superbly done, and the general impression one gets is that of power, but of power unrestrained, a strong imagination capable of greater things than Mr. Hawthorne has done. Yet the qualities characteristic of his best books, like “Archibald Malmaison,” are such as led the late Richard Henry Stoddard, a man by no means deficient in judgment, and familiar with the best in modern literature, to pronounce Mr. Hawthorne “clearly and easily the first of living romancers.”
In recent years, Mr. Hawthorne has forsaken the paths of pure literature, with which he seems never to have been in love,[17] for those of journalism.
William Dean Howells.—The apostle of latter-day realism, and one of the most noted of our writers of fiction, is Mr. Howells. He has been prominent in literary circles for more than forty years. The son of a journalist and printer, Mr. Howells was born at Martin’s Ferry, Belmont County, Ohio, in 1837. His father had adopted Swedenborgian tenets and the boy was reared in this faith. His boyhood life has been admirably described in “A Boy’s Town.” The family lived successively at several places in Ohio, and young Howells was in turn compositor, correspondent, and news editor. In 1859 he began contributing to The Atlantic Monthly, his first poem, “Andenken,” appearing anonymously in January, 1860. Nearly every volume of The Atlantic down to 1900 contains some of his work. A campaign “Life of Abraham Lincoln” (1860) netted him $160, and enabled him to make his first trip East and to meet Emerson, Lowell, and other New England writers; it also won for him the post of Consul at Venice, which he held from 1861 till 1865. The first fruits of his Italian residence were “Venetian Life” (1866) and “Italian Journeys” (1867), two descriptive works which revealed a truly poetic temperament and a refined taste. On his return to America, Mr. Howells became an editorial writer for the New York Times and a contributor to The Nation. The next year (1866), removing to Boston, he became assistant editor of The Atlantic; in 1871 he became the editor and made the magazine a stronger force than ever in criticism. On resigning this post in 1880, he spent a year or two abroad; since 1888 he has lived in New York, engaged chiefly in literary work. From 1886 till 1891 he conducted the Editor’s Study in Harper’s.
While Mr. Howells has been prolific in criticism, description, narratives of travel, literary and personal reminiscences, and lighter essays, his most significant work has been done in his novels. His first appearance as a writer of fiction was in 1871, with “Their Wedding Journey,” a slight but delicately humorous tale of a Boston couple, the Marches, who go to Canada to spend their honeymoon. “A Chance Acquaintance” (1873) is a subtle study of incompatibility of temperament. “A Foregone Conclusion” (1875) transports us to Venice, where we watch the unhappy love story, dramatically told, of an agnostic priest and an American girl. “The Lady of the Aroostook” (1879) is an amusing, healthy story of New England provincial manners. The theme of “The Undiscovered Country” (1880) is spiritualism and mesmerism. “A Fearful Responsibility” (1881) is the story of an American professor in Venice whose charge, a young girl, is loved by an Austrian officer. In “Dr. Breen’s Practice” (1881) we have pictures of summer life in a small seaside village in Maine and a study of modern Puritanism. With “A Modern Instance” (1881) may be said to begin the extremely realistic stories in Mr. Howells’ later manner; others are: “A Woman’s Reason” (1883), “The Rise of Silas Lapham” (1885), “Indian Summer” (1886), “The Minister’s Charge, or The Apprenticeship of Lemuel Barker” (1887), “April Hopes” (1887), “Annie Kilburn” (1888), “A Hazard of New Fortunes” (1890), in which the Marches have characteristic experiences in New York, “The Quality of Mercy” (1892), a painful but well told story, “The Coast of Bohemia” (1893), “An Open-Eyed Conspiracy” (1897), “Ragged Lady” (1899), “The Flight of Pony Baker” (1902), a captivating boys’ story, belonging with “A Boy’s Town,” “The Kentons” (1903), and “The Son of Royal Langbrith” (1905). From these novels, after the manner of Tolstoi, the romantic and even the ideal are rigorously excluded; we are treated to exhaustive, minutely detailed accounts of the daily lives of ordinary, generally commonplace people. Plot and incident are of secondary importance, although some chapters fairly bristle with incident; Mr. Howells holds that any transcript of real life, even though made at random, if skilfully handled, is of sufficient interest to form a good story. Naturally this view of the novel has found many opponents, and Mr. Howells’ books have been somewhat less popular of late years than they were in the eighties. After all, the hunger for the ideal cannot be wholly appeased by disagreeable actualities; and there are people whom we know all too well in the flesh to care to see them, in all their pettiness and meanness and duplicity, in the pages of fiction. Mr. Howells’ followers, however,—and there are many of them—contend that nothing is so interesting as real, actual, present life; that no detail of our daily round is without its significance; that the slightest act or omission of an act may affect our destiny. After all, the realists and the romanticists we have always with us; the former are just now in the majority; but the reaction is just as inevitable as the return of the pendulum.
In some of his later stories, as “The Traveller from Altruria” (1894) and “Through the Eye of the Needle” (1907), Mr. Howells has shown an increasing interest in the more serious problems of society—poverty, strikes, the causes of crime, “the tyranny of individualism,” and the conditions that hinder the spread of sympathy and human brotherhood. The effect of this increased ethical and human interest has probably not been to enhance the artistic value of his work; and some deplore his lapse from the high ideal of art for art’s sake. Others see in Mr. Howells’ recent works a greater attention to substance, a firmer tissue, a broader humanity. And always, be it said, in reading Mr. Howells, one is conscious of that fine and careful workmanship, that care for correct and proper form, that artistic conscience, without which, whatever his literary creed, Mr. Howells could never have become the foremost and representative American novelist of his time.