The three-volume system is peculiar to Great Britain: it does not obtain either in France or the United States. As a consequence, the French and American writer of fiction is left free to treat his subject at the length it demands,—no more and no less. It is pleasant to note that there are signs of the beginning of the break-up of the system even in England; and the protests of the chief English critics against it are loud and frequent. It is responsible in great measure for the invention and perfection of the British machine for making English Novels, of which Mr. Warner told us in his entertaining essay on fiction. We all know the work of this machine, and we all recognize the trade-mark it imprints in the corner. But Mr. Warner failed to tell us, what nevertheless is a fact, that this British machine can be geared down so as to turn out the English short story. Now, the English short story, as the machine makes it and as we see it in most English magazines, is only a little English Novel, or an incident or episode from an English Novel. It is thus the exact artistic opposite of the American Short-story, of which, as we have seen, the chief characteristics are originality, ingenuity, compression, and, not infrequently, a touch of fantasy. It is not, of course, that the good and genuine Short-story is not written in England now and then,—for if I were to make any such assertion some of the best work of Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson, of Mr. Walter Besant, and of Mr. Anstey would rise up to contradict me: it is merely that it is an accidental growth, and not a staple of production. As a rule, in England the artist in fiction does not care to hide his light under a bushel, and he puts his best work where it will be seen of all men,—that is to say, not in a Short-story. So it happens that the most of the brief tales in the English magazines are not true Short-stories at all, and that they belong to a lower form of the art of fiction, in the department with the amplified anecdote. It is the three-volume Novel which has killed the Short-story in England.
Certain of the remarks in the present paper the writer put forth first anonymously some months ago in the columns of an English weekly review. To his intense surprise, they were controverted in a leading American weekly review. The critic began by assuming that the writer had said that Americans preferred Short-stories to Novels. What had really been said was that there was a steady demand for Short-stories in American magazines, whereas in England the demand was rather for serial Novels. "In the first place," said the critic, "Americans do not prefer Short-stories, as is shown by the enormous number of British Novels circulated among us; and in the second place, tales of the quiet, domestic kind, which form the staple of periodicals like 'All the Year Round' and 'Chambers's Journal,' have here thousands of readers where native productions, however clever and original, have only hundreds, since the former are reprinted by the country papers and in the Sunday editions of city papers as rapidly and as regularly as they are produced at home." Now, the answer to this is simply that these English Novels and English stories are reprinted widely in the United States, not because the American people prefer them to anything else, but because, owing to the absence of international copyright, they cost nothing. That the American people prefer to read American stories when they can get them is shown by the enormous circulation of the periodicals which make a specialty of American fiction.
I find I have left myself little space to speak of the Short-story as it exists in other literatures than those of Great Britain and the United States, The conditions which have killed the Short-story in England do not obtain elsewhere; and elsewhere there are not a few good writers of Short-stories. Tourgéneff, Björnsen, Sacher-Masoch, Freytag, Lindau, are the names which one recalls at once and without effort as masters in the art and mystery of the Short-story. Tourgéneff's Short-stories, in particular, it would be difficult to commend too warmly. But it is in France that the Short-story flourishes most abundantly. In France the conditions are not unlike those in the United States; and, although there are few French magazines, there are many Parisian newspapers of a wide hospitality to literature. The demand for the Short-story has called forth an abundant supply. Among the writers of the last generation who excelled in the conte—which is almost the exact French equivalent for Short-story, as nouvelle may be taken to indicate the story which is merely short, the episode, the incident, the amplified anecdote—were Alfred de Musset, Théophile Gautier, and Prosper Mérimée. The best work of Mérimée has never been surpassed. As compression was with him almost a mania, as, indeed, it was with his friend Tourgéneff, he seemed born on purpose to write Short-stories. Tourgéneff carried his desire for conciseness so far that he seems always to be experimenting to see how much of his story he may leave out. One of the foremost among the living writers of contes is M. Edmond About, whose exquisite humor is known to all readers of "The Man with the Broken Ear,"—a Short-story in conception, though unduly extended in execution. Few of the charming contes of M. Alphonse Daudet, or of the earlier Short-stories of M. Emile Zola, have been translated into English; and the poetic tales of M. François Coppée are likewise neglected in this country. "The Abbé Constantin" of M. Ludovic Halévy has been read by many, but the Gallic satire of his more Parisian Short-stories has been neglected, perhaps wisely, in spite of their broad humor and their sharp wit. In the contes of M. Guy de Maupassant there is a manly vigor, pushed at times to excess; and in the very singular collection of stories which M. Jean Richepin has called the "Morts Bizarres" we find a modern continuation of the Poe tradition, always more potent in France than elsewhere. I have given this list of French writers of Short-stories merely as evidence that the art flourishes in France as well as in the United States, and not at all with the view of recommending the fair readers of this essaylet to send at once for the works of these French writers, which are not always—indeed, one may say not often—in exact accordance with the conventionalities of Anglo-Saxon propriety. The Short-story should not be void or without form, but its form may be whatever the author please. He has an absolute liberty of choice. It may be a personal narrative, like Poe's "Descent into the Maelstrom" or Hale's "My Double, and How he Undid me;" it may be impersonal, like Mr. F.B. Perkins's "Devil-Puzzlers" or Colonel De Forest's "Brigade Commander;" it may be a conundrum, like Mr. Stockton's insoluble query, "The Lady or the Tiger?" it may be "A Bundle of Letters," like Mr. James's story, or "A Letter and a Paragraph," like Mr. Bunner's; it may be a medley of letters and telegrams and narrative, like Mr. Aldrich's "Margery Daw;" it may be cast in any one of these forms, or in a combination of all of them, or in a wholly new form, if haply such may yet be found by diligent search. Whatever its form, it should have symmetry of design. If it have also wit or humor, pathos or poetry, and especially a distinct and unmistakable flavor of originality, so much the better. But the chief requisites are compression, originality, ingenuity, and now and again a touch of fantasy. Sometimes we may detect in a writer of Short-stories a tendency toward the over-elaboration of ingenuity, toward the exhibition of ingenuity for its own sake, as in a Chinese puzzle. But mere cleverness is incompatible with greatness, and to commend a writer as "very clever" is not to give him high praise. From this fault of super-subtilty women are free for the most part. They are more likely than men to rely on broad human emotion, and their tendency in error is toward the morbid analysis of a high-strung moral situation.
BRANDER MATTHEWS.
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GENERAL GRANT AT FRANKFORT.
The extraordinary honors paid to General Grant in England created a profound impression all over Europe. No other American, and, indeed, few Europeans, had ever received such honors abroad; and what made the case still more impressive and exceptional was the fact that this great distinction was paid to no potentate or prince of the blood, but to a simple private citizen, holding no rank or official position.
As soon as it was known that General Grant intended to travel on the Continent, he was invited to visit Frankfort-on-the-Main. The invitation was extended by the American residents of that city, and was accepted. A joint meeting of Americans and Frankfort burghers was then held, and a committee was appointed, half Germans and half Americans, to make arrangements for the proposed reception and entertainment of General Grant and his party. Mr. Henry Seligman, an American banker of Frankfort, and the writer of this, were appointed by this committee to intercept the distinguished tourist on his journey up the Rhine and conduct him to the city.
It was on a charming summer morning that we quitted Frankfort on this mission. General Grant was at Bingen, where he had arrived the evening before from Cologne. He was accompanied by Mrs. Grant, his son Jesse Grant, and General Adam Badeau, then Consul-General at London. Their arrival at Bingen had been so unostentatious that their presence in the town was scarcely known outside of the hotel in which they had taken rooms. Their departure was alike unnoticed.
Our train drew up at Bingen just as a special Schnellzug with the Emperor of Germany on board swept by. Proceeding at once to the hotel, we learned that General Grant had already left for Rüdesheim, but had possibly not yet crossed the river. We hastened to the landing, and there found him and his party seated under some linden-trees, waiting for the ferry. I had a package of letters for the general which had come to my care, and which, after mutual introductions, I delivered to him at once. Tearing open and throwing away the envelopes, General Grant hastily inspected the letters and passed them to General Badeau. By this time the Rüdesheim steamer had arrived, and we all went on board. In a moment more the boat pushed off and turned its course up the stately river. The rippling waters sparkled in the sunshine, and all the vine-clad hills were dressed in summer beauty. On the right, dropping behind us, was Bingen, famous in legend and in song, and on the left, in the foreground, appeared the curious spires and roofs of Rüdesheim. The scene was an ideal tableau, such as Byron describes, of the