Mr. Parkman, while doing full justice to the ability, valor and self-sacrifice of the priests, condemns of course their acceptance, and even approval, of such barbarous customs as torture and the killing of non-combatants; and this blame extends itself to the French generally, with whose adoption of savage practices he compares the self-restraint and mercifulness of the New Englanders, even when, as at the time of the capture of Port Royal, exasperated by the recent massacre of their countrymen. The causes of this difference of conduct are not far to seek, though Mr. Parkman does not explain them, being perhaps inclined to refer it to national character. The war-parties that left Quebec and Montreal consisted of soldiers, trained to the manner of war which in the first half of that century turned much of Germany into a desert, or of Indians and trappers, red and white savages, who inflicted cruelty on others with all the indifference which they displayed in bearing it. The forces of New England, on the other hand, were composed of fishermen and farmers, men with families and engaged in peaceful occupations, to which war came as an unwelcome interruption. Murder had not been taught them as a duty, but forbidden as a crime; and, more gentle by habit, it was not to be expected but that they would display far more moderation in bloodshedding.
The military character of Canada is strikingly shown by the moral influence exercised over the people by the character of the governor. As in an army the officers are known by the conduct of their troops, so his vigor or inability gave tone to the whole colony. Under Frontenac all was energy and confidence, while under the blustering La Barre and the pious Denonville, who ruled between the count's two terms of office, the habitans shut themselves up in forts, leaving their fields to the ravages of the Mohawks. At the age of seventy Frontenac returned to uphold the failing colony, sent by the king as the only man capable of performing the task. He was sagacious in council, prompt and tireless in action, and, what was a chief recommendation to his post, he well understood the character of the Indians, his dealings with whom were marked by equal address and firmness. "In their eyes," says Mr. Parkman, "Frontenac was by far the greatest of the 'Onontios' or governors of Canada." Common sense and a knowledge of men probably enabled him to make himself feared and esteemed even by the fierce, astute Iroquois, quick at noting weaknesses, but recognizing a man when they saw him. The count, on his side, was attracted by these foes, so difficult to fight, whose shrewd diplomacy and unflinching courage he appreciated no less than their childish simplicity; while their cruelties did not shock the old campaigner against the Turks, who could be cruel enough himself on an occasion where policy seemed to demand it, though he was wont to display much courtesy and generosity toward his English prisoners, many of whom he ransomed from the Indians. In fine, he deserves all the good that Mr. Parkman has to say of him, if not entitled to the unlimited laudations bestowed on him by Father Goyer. The discourse which this priest—one of the Récollet order—held over the count's grave is, as annotated by a hostile critic, a most amusing document, and gives a good idea of Frontenac's real character. He left more friends than enemies behind him, and the mourning of the whole colony for his loss may be set against the bitterness with which his Jesuit adversaries pursued him even after his death.
Nimport. (Wayside Series.) Boston: Lockwood, Brooks & Co.
Nimport certainly deserves to be set high among the new American novels that are appearing in such unaccustomed profusion. If, as it would seem, it is a first venture of some unknown writer, it indicates considerable promise, not perhaps of the highest talent, but of that agreeable union of humor and intelligence of which the richest fruit is to be seen in the stories of Mrs. Oliphant among contemporary authors. The book has decided faults: it is too long; the different chapters are incoherently put together; characters are lugged in and turned out again without any reference to the needs of the plot; what is most interesting is cut up by frequent interruptions; there are too many threads in the story; and yet, in spite of these glaring faults, there is so much cleverness of a certain sort in the parts that are good that the reader is disposed to be very clement toward this well-meant though mistaken profusion of material.
The story deals with the fortunes of a family who have been left almost penniless at the death of their parents, and it is narrated by one of their number, a somewhat wan and spectral figure, an artist, whose adventures are thrust in amid the far more interesting letters of a sister who recounts her experience as governess in a rich but underbred family. Her pen is very sharp, and she puts down what she sees and hears with a great deal of cleverness. Had the story consisted of her career alone, it would have been much completer than the present motley record, but some amusing episodes would have been sacrificed which the reader could ill spare. The best of these is the account of Aunt Bangs, the stately and unattractive relation who swoops down upon the fragment of the family left at home, perching like a raven over their heads, and bullying them to within an inch of their lives. Everything that is said about her is full of unexaggerating humor. There is no grinning through a horse-collar in these scenes, and no reckless abuse of old age, but simply accurate drawing of a disagreeable character. This is certainly much more the author's strong point than the delineation of high tragedy. A murder is as much out of place in this simple narration as it would be in a quiet, decent parlor. It is not thrilling: it is simply out of taste, in the way of being unnatural and offensive, rather than a legitimate conclusion to carefully-drawn horrors. The introduction does not lead up to such black crime: the book is on surer ground in quiet domestic incidents. Once for all, it may be said that Phil's death, the part about Miss Quilty, and possibly even what is said about Dan, might have been omitted to advantage. What would have been left has been only injured by this extraneous matter; and the directness of the impression the better parts would have made has been weakened by this distracting complexity.
The good parts are really good: they lack the morbidness which undermines so many otherwise clever stories of New England life. Too frequently in these the element of passion is left out, and in its place we have a good deal of more or less entertaining writing about love-making, with the love left out. But in this book this mistake is not made. The love-story is simple enough and obvious enough. It will never make the book a formidable rival to Jane Eyre, but so far as it goes it is true to every-day life. What is best in the book is the intelligent observation to which it bears witness: its humor is kindly and unaffected. The story is clumsy and ill-constructed, but it has decided merit, and the faults are only such as could have been best cured by the judicious application of a pair of scissors. Too often it happens that the reader of novels feels that the author's only chance is to be born again, but Nimport inspires the hope that the writer will try again.
Briefe aus Philadelphia (1876) an eine Freundin (Letters from Philadelphia to a Friend). Von Catherine Migerka. Wien.
As long as a concern—or at least curiosity—to see ourselves as others see us shall move American breasts, so long will such books as the above have interest for us. In the present case it will depend entirely upon the interest we take in what relates to ourselves, for a more vapid yet didactic little volume—or rather pamphlet—than Frau Migerka's letters we have never seen; which we say with a distinct recollection of various books by our own country-folk upon foreign lands. The author is not observant of characteristic details, nor has she the faculty of drawing inferences or coming to general conclusions correctly from what she sees and hears. She has collected some statistics, picked up some facts, noted some prominent features of the national physiognomy, which she has mixed and muddled with apostrophes to Nature, Liberty, the soul of man, the German people, the American people, and poetical reflections a little in the manner of Primula Veris, the literary lady in one of Spielhagen's novels. It is unusual for German women to travel: many of them in easy circumstances and a respectable position live and die without going more than a few miles from home. From Dresden to Pilnitz, from Berlin to Potsdam, from Vienna to Glocknitz, from Munich to the Staremberg See, is by many of the inhabitants considered not an excursion, but a journey. Frau Migerka is a Viennese, and appears to have studied men and manners exclusively in her own country, as her standards and comparisons are drawn thence alone. She came to this country with her husband, who was one of the Austrian commissioners to the International Exposition, and Philadelphia was the only American city which she saw, except fleeting glimpses of New York, Boston and Cleveland. She was exceedingly struck by New York Bay, and indeed the scenery of the country wherever she went elicited real raptures, although she invariably declines the attempt to describe it as beyond her powers: the only natural beauties on which she expatiates are sunrises, sunsets and moonlights. These not being phenomena peculiar to our heavens, it is fair to suppose that she was unaccustomed to behold them in so much beauty and splendor; but it does not seem to have occurred to her that they were due to the extraordinary clearness and brilliancy of our sky and atmosphere compared with those of most European countries. New York itself disappointed her by looking "so new and modern, with nothing to recall the past;" and she sadly contrasts Broadway with the streets of Vienna, on which stand the haughty palaces of the Schwarzenbergs, Lichtensteins and Esterhazys. One must be a soulful German to come to a new country and lament over its cities for not being old. Her remarks about Boston are calculated to irritate the feelings of sister-cities without gratifying the Bostonians: she says that the moral qualities of that community have obtained for it the prominence and leadership in the politics and religion of the country and an intellectual supremacy in public opinion, but that the city is not handsome, and that the bad taste of the edifices, within and without, is barbarous. Cleveland is the town which pleases her most, and she ascribes its beauty and charm to German influence. With Philadelphia she had some opportunity of making acquaintance, and her impressions of us will be amusing to those who are not too thin-skinned.
Frau Migerka's first letter is devoted to the women of America, whom she acknowledges to be pretty even beyond their reputation and her expectation, wider awake and better educated than the men, and beautifully dressed, although her sober taste is shocked by the display of jewelry and trinkets in public conveyances and places of amusement. She censures the rage for adornment of the women of the working-classes, and the unfitness of a woman who is maid-of-all-work, whether in her own house or that of an employer, appearing in the street arrayed with pretensions to style and elegance which belong to people of very different means and scale of living. Frau Migerka had heard of the extravagance, love of luxury and idleness of our women in all classes, but inclines to disbelieve the last charge, and to give them credit for working much harder than they themselves admit. She suspects them of being ashamed of household occupations, and shows us first the American woman, who, after drudging the whole week, sallies forth on Sunday peacockwise, "looking like a real lady" (as used to be said before "ladies" took to advertising their desire for a cook's or chambermaid's situation), and then the good German housewife, who, after "cooking and cleaning all day long, stirring with spoons and clattering with plates, patching the children's clothes and darning the goodman's hose, has no ambition beyond relating her achievements to her next-door neighbors over a friendly gossip-cup of coffee." It is a lifelike picture of the two types: no right-minded person will deny the folly and vanity of the American city woman, who does not lack mentors and censors in her own country; but whether the German housewife, after her day of multifarious scrubbing, scouring and sewing, might not find something better to talk about in the evening, Frau Migerka could learn from some of our Yankee farmers' wives. She considers American wives very inferior to German ones; and there, again, she is right, as far as industry and self-forgetfulness are concerned; but she also considers American husbands as in a condition of subservience and degradation, of which flagrant instances are their not daring to smoke in their wives' rooms, and going to market carrying the basket. How wrong and inverted is such a position! No, no: if there must be slaves, Nature has settled of which sex they shall be by appointing that the weak shall serve the strong. Therefore she accounts for the respect which the unworthy fair sex receives in America, like several other things which she cannot otherwise explain, as being a matter of tradition, the habit of a reverence which our foremothers rightly received from men for whom they had sacrificed everything but principle.
Frau Migerka betrays her curious lack of the inductive faculty by accusing us of want of domestic taste and love of home, after remarking on the inaptitude of our houses for social purposes: while delighted with their cleanliness and convenience, she is struck by the absence of suitable rooms for the assembling of guests, and the consequent inconvenient crowd at an ordinary American party. Now, home-keeping is a good fault, but a fault it is in the extent to which we carry it: moreover, we and the English are the most domestic, the only truly domestic, people, for we are the only civilized people who have houses and homes of our own, and do not live in flats and apartments and go out for our meals, repairing to beer-halls and tea-gardens in the evening. Because Frau Migerka did not see the family circle, from the grandmother down, abroad, knitting, chatting, drinking coffee and listening to music with one ear—and a very cheerful sight it is—she inferred that there is no family circle in this country, although, putting that and the snug sitting-rooms, inconvenient for large companies, together, a sharper woman would have come to an opposite conclusion. However, it is not for their acumen that we quote any of her remarks, although, as has been shown, they are sometimes sensible and just. There is much of both sense and justice in her strictures on our mode of keeping Sunday—"the compulsory Sabbath," as she terms it—which in her ignorance she supposes to be a purely American custom. She is full of sympathy for the breakers of the Sunday liquor-law, especially for the poor publicans. But while speaking of the universal strict observance of the day, she represents it as a sore tax and burden to a great number, who resent it as an infringement of their personal liberty. She reconciles the apparent contradiction in such a situation by referring to a vice which gives her a ready key to many inconsistencies of our national character and conduct—hypocrisy. One is forced to suppose that this seems a natural explanation, since the hypocrite, whether an American type or not, figures prominently in most pictures of German society drawn by German hands.