Watson's Magazine, Vol. IV, No. 2, April, 1906

by Various

T. R. W.

For our part, we prefer to depend upon the octogenarian who has just spoken, and who asserts his membership in one of the oldest families in New York, for an opinion upon the accuracy of “The House of Mirth” as a Society novel. As a novel pure and simple it seems to us to be radically defective in imaginative power, slow and cumbrous in construction, and wholly ineffective to impose an illusion. We say this with regret because we have read a good many of the author’s short stories from the time the first volume of them was issued; and the impression conveyed by her work in the short story field, as contrasted by the impression of this novel, makes clearer to us than ever the conviction that to write a short story a short-story writer is required, and to write a novel a novelist, and they have always been two persons from Mr. Kipling down and across. The author’s style is clear, sharp, refined, as before; but the gross defect of “The House of Mirth” is that the characters are pushed here and there by the author like so many wooden soldiers on a cardboard field of battle. They have no more volition than marionettes. In fact they are merely described names except in the instances of the three chief characters. One could have borne with the waxlike fibre of the attendant persons if the figure of Lily Bart, the heroine, would stand the gaze of the naked eye during even half the book. Lily is described by the author as possessing a fine sense of diplomacy in intercourse with the people of her set, yet her whole register of action from the first page reveals her as moving through the comedy without prudence, yet without conscience, with maneuver, yet without skill; with an under-appeal to the reader’s sympathy, yet exasperating the reader until in the moment of tragedy he feels that the heroine deserved all she got and ought to have got it sooner. But, when one gets away from the book, one feels that the fault is not the fault of the character, but of the author who has paltered by trying to make literary academics and psychology square with life itself and a good story.

The minor irritations of the book are the absolutely fictional flavor of the names of most of the characters, the use of English or Continental idiom, and the mummery of the illustrations. Among the English phrases which the author so much affects is the word charwoman for scrubwoman. It may be that Society calls a scrubwoman a charwoman, but we would like to see any society man or woman do it to the lady’s face.

It is announced that Clyde Fitch is to dramatize “The House of Mirth” for production next fall and that he will adhere to the construction of the story as much as possible. The book is worthy of Mr. Fitch’s lofty talent.

R. D.

Letters and Addresses. By Abraham Lincoln. Unit Book Publishing Company.

Even if there were a man, at this day of awakening in the United States, who could honestly say he had no interest in politics, providing he had any intelligence at all and ambition to think, he could not pass over such a book as “Lincoln’s Letters and Addresses” for the simple reason that on account of the style alone, the reading of them is a solace and a refreshment that endures. Of course, most of us are familiar with the addresses and the letters that have been so widely quoted, repeated, and learned by heart in school, that they are become as household words; but in such a book as this, containing infinite riches in little room, one secures not only the loftiest kind of pleasure but also a strangely intimate and attractive vision and understanding of the gaunt, unshapely figure whose genius towers higher as the years are added to the history of our country.

R. D.

Contrite Hearts. By Herman Bernstein. A. Wessels Company, New York.

Some books are interesting because of their content alone; some only on account of the personality of their author: some for the reason that both the author and the content of his book are humanly valuable. Of the third distinction is “Contrite Hearts,” a story of Jewish life in Russia and the United States, by a writer who on occasion before has shown that he can use an alien language with simplicity and force. He has shown before also that he can present a picture of the people of his race without bias and with a due understanding of their defects and qualities. The Jew in America as presented in melodrama is a creation almost wholly of the romance spirit of the theatre. It is not to be denied that the prevalence of the very poor Jews in the lowest ranks of traffickers among men has provided an obvious type. In sharp contrast to this is the growing dominance of the Jew in the very highest ranks of commerce. Between the two must of necessity exist the Jew of the middle class; and all these varieties of the race have expanded to their utmost in the United States rather than in any other country. From a purely artistic standpoint, therefore, there is nothing more evident than that the field of Jewish manners and customs is wide and rich ground for the novelist. The transmutation in one generation of a peasant in Russia, with no rights beyond those of a street mongrel, to a man in the most advanced as well as the most vigorous civilization of the day, is material too obvious to be overlooked by the most casual scribe.