So, when in life eternal we are met,
I still may wear my pearl, my Margaret!
HAVE WE A NOVELIST?
Scarcely fifty years have elapsed since Sydney Smith contemptuously asked: “Who reads an American book?” John Bull was delighted at this sneering query of the witty Dean of St. Paul’s. It was so agreeable an exposé of the literary poverty of a formidable rival. It was so very consoling to find a weak point in the young giant who had twice beaten him in war. Could Sydney Smith rise to-day from his grave in Kensal Green he would witness a marvellous change. The time has passed when he might triumphantly ask: “Who reads an American book?” The time has passed when John Bull might gloat over the poverty of American literature. We have a literature—a noble literature—of which any nation might be proud. We may confidently reverse the celebrated query of the wittiest of English divines, and ask: “Who does not read an American book?” Who does not read the histories of Prescott? Who does not read the charming writings of Irving? Who does not read the wonderful tales of Hawthorne, the poems of Longfellow, of Bryant, of Poe?
Our literary temple, like Aladdin’s palace, is glorious; but, like Aladdin’s palace, it is also incomplete. While our literature is full and splendid in poetry, in history, and in science, it has been strangely wanting in what Prescott calls “ornamental literature”: the romance. The deficiency is more particularly remarkable when we consider the magnificent field which this country offers to the novelist. Our government, our institutions, our society, our national manners, the vice and extravagance of our great cities, our political corruption, the enterprising spirit of our people, the rapid change of fortune in our commercial cities, where the born beggar often dies a millionaire, life at our watering-places—all present interesting and inexhaustible subjects for the romance-writer. No country in the world affords such strong and striking contrasts of character as the United States. Here we have the gay and mercurial Frenchman, the practical and plodding German, the generous and improvident Irishman, the reserved Englishman, the proud Spaniard, and last, but by no means least, the eager, calculating American, with his brain of fire and his heart of ice.
Certainly there is no lack of materials; the workers alone are wanting; the harvest is abundant, but the laborers are few. We want a Thackeray to expose the heartless extravagance of our best society; a Dickens to turn our hearts in generous sympathy towards the poor and suffering; a Bulwer to polish the manners of our people, and illustrate the noble truth that knowledge is power, money only its handmaiden. Within a dozen years this trio of novelists has passed away, and they have left no successors. Except a few chapters in Thackeray’s Virginians, and some absurdly nonsensical scenes in Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit, the works of the great English novelists are entirely foreign: the characters, manners, scenes—all foreign to us. But they are read here with as much pleasure as in England. The Americans are a nation of readers—men, women, and children, all read. The majority of our men read newspapers almost exclusively. Seven-eighths of the novel-reading of this country is done by women. The statistics of any popular library will show that three novels a week form the average of these fair readers.
With so great and constant a demand for novels, why have we no novelist among us?—a great novelist, a national novelist, an essentially American novelist, as Bulwer and Thackeray are essentially English. As there can be no effect without a cause, there must be a cause for this deficiency in our literature. There are two: American publishers and American readers. While an English magazine scarcely ever publishes an article by an American writer, there is not a great English novelist of the last quarter of a century who has not written for one or other of the American magazines. Dickens, Bulwer, Thackeray, Wilkie Collins, Charles Reade, George Eliot, Trollope, Miss Muloch, etc., etc., have written more or less for our periodicals. Literature, like love, must be encouraged or it languishes and dies. In addition to the want of encouragement given to American novelists by our publishers is the fact that American novel-readers affect to despise American novelists. The novel-reading ladies who frequent circulating libraries, demanding with one voice “something new,” who prefer Miss Braddon to George Eliot, and Mrs. Henry Wood to Thackeray, say they “cannot read American novels.” And yet three of the most popular novels of the last three years have been American, viz.: Infelice, One Summer, and A Question of Honor. We have seen an American lady take up The American, by Mr. Henry James, Jr., and throw it down, saying, “The name is enough.” We have seen ladies decline one of the charming stories of Mr. Aldrich or Mr. Howells, and carry off in triumph the last production of Mary Cecil Hay or the voluptuous “Ouida”! If Americans refuse to read American novels, who will read them?
The indiscriminate and almost universal novel-reading now practised is a striking and alarming feature of American life, when we consider the tone and character of so many of the modern novels. Judged by them, divorces, elopements, intrigues, and other crimes against society are the normal attendants of modern civilization. They play a conspicuous part in most of the “popular novels” of the day. Yet such books are eagerly devoured by young girls, whose minds are keenly susceptible to their dangerous influence. An insidious poison is thus infused which often fatally corrupts the youthful imagination. Bad books are the devil’s own instruments for the ruin of souls. As it is impossible to deny the fact that novels form the staple reading of a majority of the world, it is important that they should be not only pure but above suspicion.
The Catholic press cannot too strongly condemn the scope and influence of the novel of to-day. While Scott and Miss Edgeworth are neglected, the vile trash of Rhoda Broughton and Mrs. Forrester is eagerly sought. The good old habit of reading history, travels, biography, essays, etc., is almost entirely abandoned. “We want something new and exciting,” is the general cry; “history and biography are too deep.” And so they go on from week to week, from month to month, and from year to year, reading nothing but novels, and filling their minds with nonsense, if nothing worse. While we condemn indiscriminate novel-reading, we do not condemn novels indiscriminately. There are a few that can be read without detriment either to morals or religion, and these, we are sorry to say, are the novels that modern readers pronounce “flat.”
During the century of our national existence we have had three genuine American novelists: Charles Brockden Brown, James Fenimore Cooper, and William Gilmore Simms. The first of this trio possessed great natural gifts and enjoyed a liberal education. The singular advantages which nature so lavishly bestowed upon Brockden Brown prevented him from being a popular novelist. He was a pure idealist. He lived in a world of his own. His beautiful and fertile imagination created beings which never could exist in this world, and these he made the heroes and heroines of his strange stories. They may please the intellectual few, but they possess no interest for the uncultivated many. If Brown’s talents had been properly directed, if he could have kept his soaring imagination fixed on the earth, and been satisfied with describing men and things as they really exist, his would have been a lasting fame. But, as it is, he is not now read by one in ten thousand, nay, in ten times ten thousand. Cooper is second to Brown in point of time and superior to him in point of popularity. He threw a charm, a grace, and an interest around the life and character of the American Indians which appear inconsistent in the light of recent experience. In his sea-stories he succeeds where the greatest novelist signally failed. Cooper enjoyed a high reputation during life, but his novels now rank with the writings of Mayne Reid, and are almost exclusively read by boys. Simms’ stories of the Revolution and the border life in the South that succeeded the struggle for independence are excellent in their way. His Revolutionary romances afford glimpses of generous devotion to patriotism and an ardent zeal in the cause of liberty which Americans might read with profit at the present day.