Thence arises the
monstrous conflict which consumes life
without enjoyment.
monstrous conflict which consumes life
without enjoyment.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v26 to v30 - Tur to Zor and Index
It takes ten years to
tesque; but if we consider the Romans pay it; and they become inured to
as masks behind which the great lords work and poverty, and prematurely old.
and ladies of the time simper and bab- Meeting Madame Forestier one day,
ble, its pictures of life are
an
Madanie Loisel tells her the whole
as true to
## p. 312 (#348) ############################################
SYNOPSES OF NOTED BOOKS
a
312
story. "My poor Mathilde! ) says her this and other dramatic pieces by Maeter-
friend, «My necklace was paste, worth linck has been made by Richard Hovey.
at most five hundred francs. ” There
is something poignant about the con-
En Route, a novel, by J. K. Huysman,
tinual revelation of needless pain in is Kegan The
these tales; but their brilliancy, their author, whose literary career began in
vividness, their admirable art, and un- 1875, has devoted himself largely to
erring sense of values,” will long com- what may be termed a kind of brutal
pel a hearing for them.
mysticism. His works Marthe,' Les
Sæurs Vatard,' and (En Ménage,' deal
Lior
ion of Flanders, The, by Hendrik largely with themes that are sordid and
Conscience, published in 1838. In scarred with hatred and ugliness, as if
this Flemish historical romance, among his mission were mainly to portray la
the best he has written, the author deals bêtise de l'humanite. » A morbid de-
with one of the mos glorious episodes light in what is corrupt leads to
in his country's history; the expulsion of corrupt mysticism. What is known as
the armies of Philip le Bel in the thir- Satanism finds its extreme expression
teenth century from Flemish soil by a in his novel (La-Bas. ) It is a (surfeit
rising of the common people. His hero of supernaturalism producing a mental
is Robert de Bethune, the Lion of nausea. ” En Route) depicts the reli-
Flanders"); whose father, Guy de Dam- gious » conversion of a young debauché
pierre, had incurred the enmity of his of Paris, Dartal by name,-a character
French suzerain by siding with the Eng- who first appears in La-Bas. ) He is
lish king.
The story opens with a stir- blasé, empty of motives of capacity for
ring picture of the turbulence and fury pleasure or endeavor. He takes to vis-
of the Flemings on learning of the ap- iting the churches; feels a certain spell
proach of the French army. Conscience produced by the ritual and music; and
shows in this novel that he was a close at length, drawn into the monastic re-
student of Sir Walter Scott. He has a treat of La Trappe, he becomes a con-
thorough knowledge of the manners as vert to religion, and dwells with delight
well as of the history of the period in and much fine analysis on his experi-
which its scenes are laid, and he has
ence of a kind of ecstasy of restraints,
been entirely successful in giving a a «frenzy of chastity. ” The story is
faithful and lifelike conception of Flan- autobiographic: the history of a soul.
ders in the thirteenth century.
It abounds in passages of great brill-
iancy and beauty; and in some of the
Blind, The (Les Aveugles”), by Mau- meditations on the inner meaning of the
rice Maeterlinck, the young Belgian ritual, and the effect of the music of
poet-dramatist, is a play of symbolism, the church, his interpretations will meet
which, like the earlier (The Intruder, with a very sympathetic response from
is one of the writer's best-known and
many readers.
His description of the
most striking works. It is an eerie kind
Breviary is a splendid piece of writing.
of allegory. On an island, in a mystic The book may be called a faithful ae-
norland wood, under the night stars, sit count of the ritualistic disease," as it
a company of blind folk, men and wo- affects the French mind. "It was not
men, under the guidance of an old priest so much himself advancing into the un-
returned from the dead. They grope
known, as the unknown surrounding,
about in a maze and query as to their penetrating, possessing him little by
location and destiny, - a strange, striking little. ” He closes suddenly with his en-
effect being produced by the grewsome tering into the (night obscure” of the
setting of the scene and the implication mystics. It is inexpressible. Nothing
of the words, through which the reader can reveal the anguish necessary to pass
gathers that this is a symbolic picture through to enter this mystic knowledge. ”
of life, in which mankind wanders with- The soul of the writer seems to think
out faith or sight in the forest of ignor- aloud in the pages of his book; he
ance and unfaith, depending upon frankly portrays his condition: (too
priesteraft that is defunct, and knowing much writer to become a monk; too
naught of the hereafter. The poetry and much monk to remain a writer. ” The
humanity of this picture-play are very reader remains in bt, after all
strong. A good English translation of whither the hero of the book is en route.
»
a
as
## p. 313 (#349) ############################################
SYNOPSES OF NOTED BOOKS
313
G"
hosts, a powerful play by Henrik head of the so-called school of natural-
Ibsen (1881), gives dramatic em- ism, has carried his theories farther than
bodiment to the modern realization of any of his disciples. In 1869 he began
heredity. Ibsen, treating this subject his task,- a study in hereditary influ-
on its tragic side, considers the case of ence, with a complete genealogical tree,
the darker passions as they are handed and a plan for twenty novels, - from
down from father to son. The fatalistic which very little variation is seen when
atmosphere of "Ghosts) resembles that of the series is completed twenty-two years
a Greek drama. It is a Greek tragedy after. Beginning with the Coup d'État
translated into the littleness and barren- in 1852, he ends his series with the
ness of modern life.
downfall of Napoleon III. , adding Doc-
Oswald Alving, the son of a dissipated, tor Pascal, which is a résumé of the
worthless father, has been brought up series. With the ancestors whom the
by his mother in ignorance of his dead author chooses for his characters we
parent's shame. Yet he has within him should perhaps expect that animal pas-
the seeds of a transmitted disease, - the sion would be the motive of most of
evil sown by a previous generation. He these novels; but one must charge M.
has gone into the world to make a name Zola with poor judgment or a departure
for himself, but he is forced to return to from the scientific spirit, when he places
his mother's home. He drinks to excess, a character, which by his own deduc-
and he exhibits tendencies to other more tions seems to show no trace of the
dangerous vices. His wretched mother family lesion, in La Terre, the
sees in him the ghost of his father; she coarsest one of the series — for Macquart
sees the old hateful life clothed in the is the most decent of the entire com-
form of the boy she has reared so care- munity. Whatever may have been the
fully. He himself feels the poison work- author's intention, the general public
ing in his veins. The play closes upon does not read his books as a study in
the first sign of his incipient madness. heredity. Each one is complete in itself;
In this drama, the mother, Mrs. Alving, and while in 1896 the first novel of the
is the type of the new woman in revolt series had reached a sale of only 31,000
against the hideous lies of society, be- copies, there had been sold
113,000
cause she has suffered through them. copies of La Terre, 176,000 of Nana,'
She is learning to think for herself; to and 187,000 of La Débâcle. ) The first
weigh social morality in the balances. to appear was La Fortune des Rou-
Her adviser, Pastor Manders, has been gons' (The Rougon Family: 1871). Ad-
called the consummate flower of con- elaide Fouqué, whose father was insane,
ventional morality. ” He is a type of was married in 1786 to Rougon, a dull,
the world's cautiousness and policy in easy-going gardener. After her hus-
matters ethical; of that world's disposi- band's death she had two illegitimate
tion to cover up or refuse to see the children, Antoine and Ursule, by Mac-
sins of society. He is of those who quart, a drunkard and a smuggler. The
make of marriage a talisman to juggle offspring of the marriage was Pierre
Rougon. By chicanery, Rougon obtains
(Ghosts) is perhaps the most remark- possession of the property, sells it, and
able of Ibsen's dramas in its search- through marriage with a daughter of a
ing judgment, its recognition of terrible merchant, enters into an old business
fact, its logical following of the merci- firm. Ursule is married to an honest
less logic of nature.
workman named Mouret; and Antoine,
who inherits his father's appetite for
Rouge
ougon-Macquart, Les, by Émile Zola. drink, marries a market-woman, also in-
There is perhaps no literary work temperate.
of the last part of the century that has (La Curée ) (Rush for the Spoil: 1872)
caused so much comment as this series is a study of the financial world of Paris
of twenty novels, relating the natural at the time Haussmann laid out the
and social history of a family under the boulevards. Aristide, son of Pierre, who
Second Empire. It is a phenomenon that has changed his name to Saccard, be-
cannot be ignored in a history of litera- comes immensely wealthy by political
ture, not only because of the variety of intrigue, - acting as straw-man for the
subjects treated, but from the fact that
government in the purchase of the prop-
the author, being the acknowledged erty needed to lay out the new boule-
away vice.
## p. 314 (#350) ############################################
314
SYNOPSES OF NOTED BOOKS
is the family representative. There are
fine descriptions of Paris seen from a
height, varying with the spiritual phases
of the characters.
Nana' (1880). A study of the life
of a courtesan and actress. Nana is
the daughter of Gervaise and the drunk-
ard Coupeau. She grows up in the
streets and disreputable haunts until she
comes under the notice of a theatre
manager. Her great physical beauty
attracts men of all classes, and none
resist her. The grandest names
soiled; and those who do not leave
with her their fortunes, leave their honor
or their life. The greatest fortunes are
dissipated by her, and yet at her door
is heard the continual ring of the cred-
itor. She contracts the black smallpox,
and dies deserted and wretched. The
description of her
her appearance
after
death is a shocking contrast to the pict-
of voluptuousness in the other
are
ures
scenes.
vards. He is helped by his elder brother
Eugène, who has entered political life.
La Conquête de Plassans) (The Con-
quest of Plassans: 1874). The struggle
for the control of a village in which the
Abbé Faujas obtains complete ascend-
ency over Marthe Rougon, who is mar-
ried to François Mouret. The latter,
accused of insanity, is placed in an asy-
lum, and finally becomes insane. Escap-
ing, he sets fire to his house, destroying
himself and the abbé therein.
(Le Ventre de Paris, (The Markets
of Paris; or, Fat and Thin: 1875). Lisa
Macquart is the member of the family
who, as a market-woman, furnishes op-
portunity for a detailed study of the
markets. Zola looks upon this work as
a sort of modern Iliad, the song of the
eternal battle between the lean of this
world and the fat. Of this book a
prominent critic said that he had been
able to read it only by holding his nose.
(La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret (The
Abbé's Temptation: 1875). A study of
the clergy, religious life, and mysticism,
in which Serge Mouret is the leading
character. It is almost needless to say
that the abbé does not resist tempta-
tion; but by repentance he is able later
to perform, with little perturbation, the
burial service over the woman he had
loved.
"Son Excellence Eugène Rougon) (His
Excellency Eugène Rougon: 1876). A
story of political life, in which are real-
istic descriptions of the Imperial Court,
of the functions of Prime Minister (Rou-
gon) and his cabinet, and a careful pen
picture of Napoleon III. , his manners
and customs.
L'Assommoir) (Drink: 1877). A
story of life among the workmen of
Paris, and of the killing effect which the
cheap drinking-shop has on them. Ger-
vaise, the daughter of Antoine, is the
character around whom the scenes re-
volve. It was this work which brought
Zola his reputation and fortune.
Une Page d'Amour) (A Love Epi-
sode: 1878). A physical and psycho-
logical study of the various phases of
a woman's passion. The struggle is
between her love for her child and her
passion for a doctor who has saved the
child's life. The night on which she
cedes herself to the doctor, the child,
looking from an open window for her
return, contracts a sickness from which
it dies. Hélène, the daughter of Ursule,
(Pot-Bouille) (Piping Hot: 1882). A
study of the life of the bourgeoisie.
Octave, the son of François Mouret,
comes to Paris determined to make his
fortune through women's love for him.
A study of life in the tenement flats,
where the skeletons of the different
family closets are made to dance for
our amusement, to the music of the
servants' quarrels ascending from the
kitchens.
(Au Bonheur des Dames) (The La-
dies' Paradise: 1883). A study of the
mammoth department stores. Octave,
by his marriage with the widow He-
douin, and her subsequent death, be-
proprietor of the shop.
A
description is given of the growth of
the business, of the struggle for exist-
by the smaller stores and of
their being swallowed up by the giant,
and of the entire routine of a great
comes
ence
store.
a
(La Joie de Vivre) (How Jolly Life
Is! ). Pauline Quenu, the daughter of
Lisa, is a foil to the character of Nana:
woman of well-balanced mind, giv-
ing up her lover to her friend, and
upon their separation, taking their child
and becoming its true mother. Always
triumphant and smiling, she is
sacrificing herself to the selfish, whin-
ing egoism of those who surround her.
(Germinal) (Master and Man: 1885).
A study of life in the mines. The
illegitimate son of Gervaise, Étienne
ever
## p. 315 (#351) ############################################
SYNOPSES OF NOTED BOOKS
315
wealth, starts the “Banque Universelle »
for the exploitation of different schemes
in the Orient. A description is given
of the unscrupulous methods employed
to float great schemes. Saccard's bank
becomes the leading institution of the
stock exchange. Subscriptions pour in
by the million, - widows, orphans, and
millionaires fighting to get the shares;
and Saccard is the financial ruler, rolling
in wealth and luxury. Then comes the
struggle with the bears, the final de-
feat, and the ruin of the investors.
(La Débâcle) (The Downfall: 1892).
A study of the Franco-Prussian War and
the Siege of Paris. Napoleon III. again
enters on the scene, in the most degrad-
ing and belittling position imaginable.
Jean Macquart is the hero of the tale.
"Le Docteur Pascal' (1892). Pascal
Rougon, son of Pierre, has collected all
the data relating to his family, and
sums up their history. Adelaide Fouqué
is insane; Eugène, a deputy to Congress;
Saccard, an editor; Octave, a successful
merchant; Jean Macquart, married again
and father of a healthy family. Doctor
Pascal diagnoses his own mortal disease,
hour by hour; and as he feels the last
moment approaching, jumps from his
bed, adds the date and cause of his
death to the genealogical tree, as well
as the birth of his illegitimate child by
his niece, in the words, “Unknown child
to be born in 1894. What will it be ? )))
Lanier, a socialist, is forced to work
in the mines. Low wages and fines
cause a strike, of which Lanier is one
of the leaders. He counsels modera-
tion; but hunger drives the miners to
desperation, and force is met by force.
Several are killed, Lanier is deported,
and the miners fall back into their old
slavery. This work is generally con-
sidered to be the author's best.
(L'Euvre) (Labor: 1886). A study
of artist life. Claude Lanier, illegiti-
mate son of Gervaise, a painter with a
vivid power of conception, lacking the
power of execution; and, in despair of
attaining his ideal, hangs himself before
an unfinished picture.
(La Terre) (The Soil: 1888). A study
of peasant life and the greed for land; a
greed which causes hatred between sis-
ters, neglect of parents, and ends in the
murder of Jean Macquart's wife by her
sister. This story abounds in vulgarity,
and the brutish instincts of the peasants
make them lower than the beasts that
surround them. It has aroused
opposition than any other of his works.
(Le Rêve) (The Dream: 1888). This
has been likened to a fairy story; and it
is said Zola wrote it in deference to the
sentiment against his admission to the
Academy, to show that his strength did
not wholly lie in «realism. ” Angelique,
the illegitimate daughter of Sidonie
Rougon, is placed in a foundling asy-
lum, and adopted by a family whose
occupation is the making of church vest-
ments. She dreams of her prince, who
soon presents himself in the person of a
painter of church windows, who is really
the son of a bishop who took orders
after his wife's death. He opposes his
son's marriage to a woman of the lower
classes; but consents when called to ad-
minister the last sacrament to Angelique,
and she dies in her husband's arms.
(La Bête Humaine) (Human Brutes:
1890). A study of railway life, in which
Jacques Lanier, a locomotive engineer,
inherits the family lesion in the form
of a maniacal desire to murder women.
There is a stirring description of
struggle on a moving locomotive be-
tween Lanier and his drunken fireman,
in which both are precipitated under the
wheels, and the express train is left to
drive along without check.
( L'Argent) (Money: 1891). A study
of stock speculation and “wild-cat» com-
panies. Aristide Saccard, having lost his
more
Salammbo,. . . by
Gustave Flaubert.
(1864. ) This historical romance was
the fruit of M. Flaubert's visit to the
ruins of old Carthage, and is a kind of
revivification of the ancient capital and
its people. The scenes testify to the
great erudition of the author, but critics
complain that the picture has too little
perspective. All is painted with equal
brilliance -matter essential and unes-
sential.
The sacred garment of Tanit is made
the object around which the action re-
volves; and the fate of Carthage is
bound up in the preservation of this
vestment within her walls. The central
point of the story is the boundless pas-
sion of Matho, a common soldier among
the mercenaries, for Salammbô, the
beautiful daughter of the great Hamil-
car; and the fate of the vestment of
Tanit continually overshadows the fate
of his love. By a mad act of daring,
he gets possession
of the carefully
a
## p. 316 (#352) ############################################
316
SYNOPSES OF NOTED BOOKS
school somewhat like the Dotheboys
Hall made famous by Dickens, until his
final release from a bed in the char-
ity hospital. He becomes dull, sickly,
inert; but his finer qualities die hard,
and are perhaps only latent even during
his worst days of labor in an iron foun-
dry, and of fevered exhaustion as stoker
on an ocean steamer. But life never
becomes quite hopeless; for love and
sympathy reach even to Jack, and offer
him a partial compensation. After the
publication of Jack, Daudet wrote a
sketch of the original of the hero; for in
its main outline the story is a true one.
Here, as usual, he took a framework of
fact, upon which his poetic instinct and
sympathetic imagination reared a mem-
orable work of art.
guarded treasure, and through its influ-
ence on the popular mind, heads a rising
of the troops, who proceed against Car-
thage. Urged on by the High Priest,
Salammbô is persuaded that it is her
sacred duty to recover the stolen vest-
ment, and so bring back the protection
of the goddess to the arms of Carthage.
Under his instruction, she is led secretly
by night to the tent of Matho to obtain
the vestment. Obedient to the pontiff,
she endures the soldier's wild transports
of joy, and succeeds in carrying away
the vestment, which in his self-forget-
ting adoration he has wrapped about
her. Fortune returns to the Carthagin-
ians, the rebellious leader is taken, and
Salammbô's wedding to the man of her
father's choice is made the scene of
Matho's martyrdom. Looking down at
the torn and dying man, whose eyes
alone retain the semblance of humanity,
Salammbô suddenly recalls the tender
babble of those agonized lips, the adora-
tion of those eyes on that night in his
tent. She realizes what this man has
suffered for love of her, and her heart
breaks. In the act of drinking the wine
her bridegroom offers, she sinks back
dead. And thus the two beings whose
touch has profaned the garment of
Tanit pass from the earth. The most
brilliant of romances dealing with the
classic world, this story holds its place
through all variations of popular taste,
among the masterpieces of fiction.
Jack, by Alphonse Daudet (1876), is a
story of experience and emotion.
Less skillful treatment would have made
so tragical a tale revolting. But Daudet
does not content himself with cold psy-
chological analysis or brilliant exposition
of character. His dominant quality is a
passionate sympathy, which communi-
cates itself to his readers, and forces
them to share his pity or anger or ad-
miration. Jack, introduced to us as a
pretty boy, beautifully dressed, might
have lived an adequate life but for his
light and selfish mother. He is sacri-
ficed to her moral weakness, and to the
bitter selfishness of his stepfather D'Ar-
genton. The latter, a noble idealist in
theory, while petty and base in practice,
is jealous of this inconvenient, superfluous
Jack, and thrusts him outside the home.
Jack's life is a long martyrdom, from
his homesick days with the little black
King of Dahomey, in a nondescript
a
Problematic Characters (“Problema-
tische Naturen'), a romance by
Friedrich Spielhagen. (3 vols. , 1860. )
For this, his first important production,
Spielhagen chose as motto a quotation
from Goethe, in which is to be found
the underlying thought of the romance:
« There are problematical natures which
are not equal to the conditions among
which they are placed, and whom no
conditions satisfy.
Thence arises the
monstrous conflict which consumes life
without enjoyment. ” In the narrative,
the strongest illustration of this class
of persons is the character of Oswald
Stein, the hero. He is introduced as
private tutor in a noble family; as
man of good, honorable, and kindly in-
tentions, and of much personal charm.
But the development of the story shows
him to lack one essential trait, the
absence of which his courage and his
warmth prove insufficient to the de-
mands of duty; he is inconstant. The
three volumes lead him from one
periment in the realm of sentiment to
another,— his most striking experience
involving Melitta, a beautiful and warm-
hearted lady of rank in the neighbor-
hood. Oswald proves himself incapable
of a real fidelity and lasting affection
towards any
of the fair beings who
lavish their hearts upon him.
One of
them says of him that he is fickle sim-
ply because he forever pursues an
attainable ideal, and is forever disap-
pointed! This aspiring and sympathetic
soul arouses sympathy, however, only in
his character of faithful and brotherly
friend to his charge, Bruno. Bruno
ex-
un-
## p. 317 (#353) ############################################
SYNOPSES OF NOTED BOOKS
317
himself is another problematic character,
but he is not called upon to set his fit-
ful temper and stormy heart against the
hard necessities of life: he dies while
still a loving, heroic, moody boy, little
understood, and loved by few. At his
death, Oswald departs for fresh scenes;
and the conclusion of the romance is
not at all a conclusion of the action,
which is reached in a later novel.
to help him, with Mary St. John at their
head. After waiting so many years, he
at last finds his father, sunk to the low-
est depth of poverty and degradation.
He gradually wins his affection, and re-
stores him to health. They start for
India together; but the ship is lost, and
they are never heard from again.
This is not at all a story of action,
nor is it told with great skill: it is
mainly an account of the growth of
Robert's soul. His strong good-sense,
courage, and helpfulness, are shown.
The story has the decided metaphysical
character of all Macdonald's stories.
coner
Old Sir Douglas, by the Hon. Mrs.
comes
Robert Falconer, a story, by George
Macdonald. (1875. ) Robert Fal.
is brought up by his grand-
mother in a little Scotch town. His
mother had died when he was too young
to remember her. His father was worth-
less and dissipated, and had left home
when Robert was a mere child. The
most vivid impression of Robert's youth,
an impression that colored the whole
course of his life, is his grandmother's
anguish over her son; whose soul, ac-
cording to her rigid Scotch theology, is
lost forever. Robert grows up with the
settled purpose of finding and reclaim-
ing his father. His youth is outwardly
uneventful, but he early revolts against
the theology of his grandmother, and
his doubts of the existence of God cause
him great mental struggles. His neigh-
bor, Mary St. John, a calm, high-souled
woman, exerts a great refining influ-
ence over him. He develops a talent for
music, and learns secretly to play on
his grandfather's violin; but Mrs. Fal-
coner, his grandmother, finding the violin
in Robert's possession, burns it as an
instrument of the Devil. When Robert
goes to Aberdeen to college, his protégé,
a poor boy nicknamed Shargar, follows
him, and the two live together with the
rigid economy so frequent among Scotch
students. In Aberdeen, Robert meets
the man who has the deepest influence
over him, Eric Ericson, and his father's
friend Dr. Anderson. Eric is troubled
by the same doubts as Robert; and be-
ing of a more sensitive, fiery nature, is
even more distressed thereby. Eric wins
the heart of Mary St. John, who has
always been Robert's divinity; but he
dies before they can be married. Rob-
ert travels, and studies medicine for five
years. Dr. Anderson, at his death, has
left Robert his property; and the latter
returns to Scotland, and then goes to
London. There he spends his time and
money helping the poor, and soon has
a company of earnest men and women
Norton (1871. ) The thread of
plot which this story follows is this:
By the death of his father, a Scotch
gentleman, Douglas Ross
into
possession of a large estate; and by the
death of his only brother immediately
afterwards, is made the guardian of a
nephew, Kenneth, legitimatized on that
brother's death-bed. The boy inherits
his father's profligate tendencies, and as
he grows to manhood becomes a daily
anxiety to his uncle. It is in Italy,
where he has been called by Kenneth's
bad conduct, that Sir Douglas meets
and marries Gertrude Skifton, who has
already refused Kenneth, and is made
most unhappy by his unkindness. The
scene changes to Glenrossie, the Scot-
tish home where the conditions are not
improved, but made harder by the pres-
ence of a malignant stepsister. Good
deeds, however, bear fruit as surely as
evil ones. From this point the com-
plications multiply, and many calamities
threaten; but the blameless lives of Sir
Douglas and his gentle wife do not
close in darkness. The story is one of
the battle of life waged in an obscure
corner of the world: interesting because
it is typical; realistic almost to the point
of offense, were it not that its realism
is not willful but subserves an end.
rey Days and Gold, by William
Winter, is a record of the author's
wanderings in England and Scotland,
and of his impressions of beauty in those
countries. In the preface he writes:
«The supreme need of this age in
America is a practical conviction that
progress does not consist in material
prosperity, but in spiritual advancement.
Utility has long been exclusively wor-
shiped. The welfare of the future lies
Grey
## p. 318 (#354) ############################################
318
SYNOPSES OF NOTED BOOKS
in the worship of beauty. To that wor-
ship these pages are devoted. The
book is written with the enthusiasm of
one to whom a new world has opened.
Because the author sees his England
with undimmed eyes, what he says of
it is fresh and vital and original. The
classic shrines of England, the haunts
of Moore, old York, Bath, and Worces-
ter, Stratford, London, and Edinburgh,
become new places and new cities seen
for the first time. In this summer light
of appreciation the entire volume is
steeped. It is written in an intimate
conversational style, with the warmth
of one who must share his pleasant
memories with others.
a
woman.
Log-Book of a Fisherman and Zoolo-
gist, by Frank Buckland. (1875. )
The chapters of this book were origi-
nally published as articles in the period-
ical Land and Water. They all have
some bearing on zoology; and possess
such titles as Exhibitions Outside the
Cattle Show,' King Charles the First's
Parrot,' Foot of Napoleon's Charger,'
(Fish at Great Grimsby Docks,' (Sing-
ing Mice,' (Experience of a Whitstable
Diver,' (The Woodpecker and the Bit-
tern,' (Reminiscences of Natural History
in Scotland,' My Monkeys,' etc. The
book is agreeable light reading; always
entertaining, and often instructive. In
the chapter on Horseflesh Dinner at
the Langham Hotel, the author's oppo-
sition to hippophagy is recorded; while
the chapter on Dinner of American
Game at the Langham Hotel is duly
appreciative. The account of a fight
between a scorpion and a mouse, in
which the mouse comes off victorious, is
very curious. The essayist is a firm be-
liever in the value of observation. He
thinks the education of the present day
is too much restricted to book-learning,
taking quite too much for granted the
authority of whatever ideas and opinions
obtain the authenticity of print. Adults,
even more than the young, he thinks,
should be not only trained to observe
and impress exact images of objects on
the memory, but to use their fingers in
analyzing and drawing, and above all,
in dissecting beasts, birds, and fishes, so
as to understand their wonderful struct-
and mechanism. Few naturalists
have united exact knowledge and minute
observation with so agreeable a faculty
of description as has Mr. Buckland.
Master; The, by . . Zangwill. (1895. )
This story is the biography of an
artist; and in it the reader is led to an
artist's London, and wanders through an
artist's world. From early boyhood the
ruling passion of Matthew Strang's life
is a love of art and a desire to paint
pictures. A poor boy, struggling against
poverty and misfortune, he ever keeps
this goal in view. Overwhelmed by
want and suffering, he marries a young
woman his intellectual inferior, but pos-
sessed of a small competency by which
he is enabled to pursue his beloved vo-
cation. He becomes a great artist; and
the distance widens between him and
his commonplace wife, who has no ap-
preciation of his work or ideals. Mat-
thew Strang is courted by distinguished
people, and breathes an atmosphere that
intensifies the contrast with his own
home, which he rarely visits. He is
thrown into the society of Eleanor Wynd-
wood, beautiful and accomplished
She is his ideal, and he falls
in love with her. He feels that in-
spired by her companionship he could
achieve the highest success. Eleanor
returns his love; and Strang is on the
point of forgetting all but his passion
for her, when he is suddenly awakened
to the realization that his highest duty
lies in the renunciation of his desires.
He goes back to his nagging, prosaic
wife, and irritating household, having
bid farewell to his love and art. But
the latter is not to be taken leave of;
for, away from the whirl of society and
in the solitude of his out-of-town studio,
he toils to accomplish his best work.
Here “the master » at last produces his
greatest pictures; here he becomes not
only master of his art, but “master of
his own soul. ” Throughout the book
the point of view is profoundly poetic,
and the character of the master is
developed with truly masterly skill: as
are also the portraits of Billy, the art-
ist's deformed brother; the sharp-tongued
Rosina, his wife and his foster-sister,
steadfast Ruth Hailey, whose gentle in-
fluence and self-effacing love are con-
trasted with the more selfish affection of
the impressionable and impulsive Eleanor.
The book is filled with clever epigram-
matic phrases, and abounds in humor.
ure
by Charles Gibbon.
(1873. ) The scene of this clever
story is laid in Scotland, at a place not
Robin Gray
## p. 319 (#355) ############################################
SYNOPSES OF NOTED BOOKS
319
upon L
far from Ayr. Opportunity is thus
given for a very good sketch of Scotch
life and character. The book derives
its name from one of the central fig-
ures, Robin Gray, a farmer, who mar-
ries the daughter of a fisherman. She,
Jeanie Lindsay, was engaged to one
James Falcon, supposed to have been
lost at sea. Falcon returns; and through
jealous blindness Robin Gray is led to
believe that his wife is about to run
away with Falcon, with whom he quar-
rels. On the same night a murder is
committed, and suspicion falls
Gray. Through the devotion of his
wife, Gray is cleared, and the mur-
derer brought to justice. Most of the
mischief is caused by Nicol M'Whap-
ple, whose iniquities assume huge pro-
portions as the story proceeds. He is
the Laird of Clashgirn, and is found
to have unlawfully come into posses-
sion of the estate, which in fact be-
longs to Falcon, whose real name is
Sutherland. M’Whapple endeavors in
several different ways to get Falcon
killed, and the quarrel between Falcon
and Gray is caused by M'Whapple's
intrigues. When at last his villainy is
exposed, he conveniently dies, and saves
the reader from the pain of a trial and
execution. In the end, Robin Gray
and his wife are reconciled: and Fal-
con, or Sutherland, who has become
Laird of Clashgirn, goes away for a six-
years' voyage; from which he returns
reconciled to the loss of his love, and
finds another love.
questions of responsibilities which arise,
deaf to moral obligations and the rights
of others, coquetting with the affections
of the girl Phemie Sims, with whose
family he resides at Etowah Cove, play-
ing a daily farce to the eyes of the sim-
ple mountaineers, his existence implies
a double meaning in the title, - juggler
of morals, juggler of emotions, juggler of
self-respect and manhood. The study of
character made in this book is fresh and
honest, and the story is interesting.
Lor
ove Me Little, Love Me Long, was
published in 1857.
In this story,
Charles Reade turned away from his
wonted exposition of social abuses to
write a love story, pure and simple. It
is a pleasant study of upper middle-class
English life. Lucy Fountain, a young
heiress, has two guardians - her uncle
Mr. Fountain, and Mr. Bazalgette the
husband of her mother's half-sister; and
she divides the year between their two
homes. She is pretty, charming, and
useful; and both Uncle Fountain and
Aunt Bazalgette want to establish her
close at hand by choosing a husband
for her. But Lucy is indifferent both to
Mr. Hardy, the banker selected by her
aunt, and Mr. Talboys, the man of an-
cient lineage who is favored by her
uncle. She falls in love with David
Dodd, a manly young sailor in the
merchant service, who loves her, but
who recognizes her social superiority,
while he is forced to admit that his
Lucy is freakish,- now kind, now cold.
To escape importunity at home, she
runs away and stays with her old nurse,
where David discovers and wins her.
They have a few blissful weeks together
before David Sails on the Rajah, of
which through Lucy's influence he has
been made captain. The story is sim-
ple, but full of homely incident, clever
dialogue, shrewd character-drawing, and
overflowing humor.
With its sequel,
(Very Hard Cash, it is considered
among
the best of Reade's novels,
Lucy herself is the type of
oftenest drawn by Reade, - pretty, emo-
tional, noble at heart, but given to co-
quettish deceits and uncertain moods,
until steadied by love.
Marjorie Daw, by Thomas Bailey Ald-
rich. The well-known story of Mar-
jorie Daw is developed through the cor-
respondence of two young men, named
respectively John Flemming and Edward
>
Juggler, The, by Charles Egbert Crad-
. The story departs in some
degree from the traditions of Miss Mur-
free, though her scenes are still laid in
the Tennessee mountains. Her hero,
Lucien Royce, is not only an amateur
athlete of renown, but he can do tricks
of legerdemain, and he possesses other
fascinating accomplishments. Being in-
trusted by his firm with a large sum of
money, and losing it in a shipwreck, he
dares not return to his home in the
city, fearing that his story will not be
believed. He is reported dead; and
fleeing to the Cumberland Mountains,
weakly accepts the
fate has
offered. His reputed death causes many
complications. A valuable property is
held on life tenure,— his being the life
chosen, a compliment to athletic
reputation. Shilly-shallying with the
woman
excuse
## p. 320 (#356) ############################################
320
SYNOPSES OF NOTED BOOKS
Delaney. The latter seeks to relieve
the tedium of his friend's sick-room by
a description of his neighbor, Marjorie
Daw. He paints her charms in glow-
ing colors, and enlarges upon her at-
tractions, the wealth of her father, and
the delightful colonial mansion in which
she dwells. Flemming, who is com-
pletely fascinated with his friend's de-
scription, falls in love with the maiden,
and presses Delaney for more and more
particulars, which he generously fur-
nishes, until he has convinced Flem-
ming that Marjorie has been led to
reciprocate his feelings. The critical
moment at last arrives when Flemming,
having sufficiently recovered, telegraphs
that he intends to press his suit in per-
son. His friend, now realizing how seri-
ous the affair has become, endeavors
frantically to prevent Flemming from
carrying out his purpose; but finding
his efforts unavailing, he departs hastily
from town, leaving a note of explana-
tion behind him. Flemming arrives, re-
ceives Delaney's note, and encounters
the surprise of his life. This short
story was first published in 1873, and
is a very characteristic piece of Mr.
Aldrich's clever workmanship.
Italian Journeys, by W. D. Howells,
is the record of leisurely excursions
up and down the land,- to Padua, Fer-
rara, Genoa, Pompeii, Naples, Rome,
and many other towns of picturesque
buildings and melodious names, from
Capri to Trieste. Mr. Howells knows
his Italy so well, that though he writes
as a foreigner, he is in perfect sympathy
with his subject. He knows the inn-
keepers, guides, and railway men to be
dead to truth and honesty, but he likes
them; and he knows that Tasso's prison
never held Tasso, and that the history
of most of the historic places is purely
legendary, but he delights to believe in
them all. He sees in the broken col.
umns and fragmentary walls of Pompeii
all the splendor of the first century, that
time of gorgeous wealth; and in an old
house at Arquá, he has a vision of
Petrarch writing at his curious carved
table. In crumbling Herculaneum his
spirit is touched to wistful sympathy by
a garden of wild flowers: Here — where
so long ago the flowers had bloomed,
and perished in the terrible blossoming
of the mountain that sent up its awful
fires in the awful similitude of Nature's
harmless and lovely forms, and show-
ered its destroying petals all abroad -
was it not tragic to find again the soft
tints, the graceful shapes, the sweet
perfumes, of the earth's immortal life?
Of them that planted and tended and
plucked and bore in their bosoms and
twined in their hair these fragile child-
ren of the summer, what witness in the
world ? Only the crouching skeletons un-
der the tables - Alas and alas! ” His
love of the beautiful is tempered by a
keen sense of humor; and the combina-
tion makes his volume a delightful
record, with the sunshine of Italy shut
between its covers.
Foregone Conclusion, A, by W. D.
Howells, (1875,) one of his earlier
and simpler novels, relates the love story
of Florida Vervain, a young girl sojourn-
ing in Venice with her mother, an
amiable, weak-headed woman, of the type
so frequently drawn by the author. The
daughter is beloved by the l’nited States
consul, a Mr. Ferris, and by Don Ippo-
polito, a priest. The latter is a strongly
drawn, interesting study. He is a man
whom circumstances rather than inclina-
tion led into the priesthood. From the
hour of his ordination he finds the holy
office an obstacle to his normal develop-
ment. He has the genius of the in-
ventor; has spent years in perfecting
impossible models. Florida Vervain be-
comes his pupil in Italian. Her young
enthusiasm leads her to believe that if
Don Ippolito were only in America his
inventions would receive fruitful recogni-
'tion. She proposes that he accompany
her and her mother to Providence. He,
in the first joy of the prospect, declares
his love for her. She is horror-stricken
because he is a priest ); and her re-
fusal of him eventually brings about his
death. These events open the eyes of
Ferris, whose jealousy of the poor priest
had led him into a sullen attitude to-
wards the woman he loved.
The novel, despite a happy ending,
is overshadowed by the tragic central
figure of Don Ippolito. The priest and
the girl are remarkably vivid, well-drawn
characters. There is just enough of the
background of Venice to give color to
the story.
Almayer's Folly, by Joseph Conrad, is
a novel of Eastern life, whose scene
is laid on a little-known river of Borneo,
and whose personages are fierce Malays,
a
## p. 321 (#357) ############################################
SYNOPSES OF NOTED BOOKS
32 1
$
cunning Arabs, stolid Dutch traders, Percival himself, in the same event, will
slaves, half-breeds, pirates, and white receive the whole of Laura's fortune.
renegades. Almayer, the son of a Dutch Laura had pledged her dead father to
official in Java, has been adopted in a marry Sir Percival, but she has no love
sort of way by one Captain Lingard, a for him. Marian Halcombe goes with
disreputable English adventurer, who per- her to Blackwater Park. There, in the
suades him to marry a Malay girl, whom form of a diary, she carries on the nar-
also he has adopted, the sole survivor rative where Walter Hartright discon-
of a crew of Malay pirates sent by Lin- tinued it. A plot is hatched by Count
gard to their last account. The story is
Fosco, who is
strong villain, and by
crowded with adventure, and the charac- Sir Percival, who is a weak one, to get
ters stand out, living creatures, against a Laura out of the way and obtain her
gorgeous tropical background. But its money, by taking advantage of the re-
merit lies in its careful rendering of
semblance between her and Anne Cath-
race traits, and in its study of that dry- erick, who at the time is very ill. By
rot of character, indecision, irresolution, a series of devices Laura is brought to
procrastination. It is quite plain that the London, and put into an asylum as
sins Mr. Conrad imputes to his frustrate Anne Catherick; while the dying Anne
ghosts) are the unlit lamp and the un- Catherick is called Lady Glyde, and
girt loin. )
after her death buried as Lady Glyde.
These events are told by the various
Woman in White, The, an early and actors in the drama. By the efforts of
notable novel by Wilkie Collins, Marian, who does not believe that her
was published in 1873. Like his other sister is dead, she is rescued from the
works of fiction, it is remarkable for the asylum. Walter Hartright, seeking to
admirable manner in which its intricate expose Sir Percival's villainy, discovers
plot is worked out. The narrative is that he is sharing a secret with Anne
told by the different characters of the Catherick's mother; that Anne knew the
story in succession. The first narrator secret, and had therefore been confined
is Walter Hartright, a drawing-master, in an asylum by the pair: the secret
who has been employed by Mr. Fred- being that Sir Percival had no right
erick Fairlie of Limmeridge House, in to his title, having been born out of
Cumberland, England, to teach drawing wedlock. Before Hartright can expose
to his nieces, Laura Fairlie and her this fraud, Sir Percival himself is
half-sister Marian Halcombe. Laura burned to death, while tampering with
bears strange resemblance to
the register of the church for his own
woman who had accosted him
interest. In the general clearing-up of
lonely road near London, - a
affairs, it
becomes
known that the
clothed entirely in white; who, he after- Woman in White was the half-sister of
wards discovers, is an Anne Catherick, Laura, being the natural child of her
supposed to be half-witted, and, when father Philip Fairlie.
he met her, just escaped from an asy- The story ends with the happy mar-
lum. In her childhood Anne had been riage of Laura to Hartright, and with
befriended by Laura's mother, Mrs. the restoration of her property.
Fairlie, because of her resemblance to
Laura, and by her had been dressed in
Armadale, by Wilkie Collins 1866. The
white, which Anne had worn ever since
, The
in memory of her benefactress.
tesque; but if we consider the Romans pay it; and they become inured to
as masks behind which the great lords work and poverty, and prematurely old.
and ladies of the time simper and bab- Meeting Madame Forestier one day,
ble, its pictures of life are
an
Madanie Loisel tells her the whole
as true to
## p. 312 (#348) ############################################
SYNOPSES OF NOTED BOOKS
a
312
story. "My poor Mathilde! ) says her this and other dramatic pieces by Maeter-
friend, «My necklace was paste, worth linck has been made by Richard Hovey.
at most five hundred francs. ” There
is something poignant about the con-
En Route, a novel, by J. K. Huysman,
tinual revelation of needless pain in is Kegan The
these tales; but their brilliancy, their author, whose literary career began in
vividness, their admirable art, and un- 1875, has devoted himself largely to
erring sense of values,” will long com- what may be termed a kind of brutal
pel a hearing for them.
mysticism. His works Marthe,' Les
Sæurs Vatard,' and (En Ménage,' deal
Lior
ion of Flanders, The, by Hendrik largely with themes that are sordid and
Conscience, published in 1838. In scarred with hatred and ugliness, as if
this Flemish historical romance, among his mission were mainly to portray la
the best he has written, the author deals bêtise de l'humanite. » A morbid de-
with one of the mos glorious episodes light in what is corrupt leads to
in his country's history; the expulsion of corrupt mysticism. What is known as
the armies of Philip le Bel in the thir- Satanism finds its extreme expression
teenth century from Flemish soil by a in his novel (La-Bas. ) It is a (surfeit
rising of the common people. His hero of supernaturalism producing a mental
is Robert de Bethune, the Lion of nausea. ” En Route) depicts the reli-
Flanders"); whose father, Guy de Dam- gious » conversion of a young debauché
pierre, had incurred the enmity of his of Paris, Dartal by name,-a character
French suzerain by siding with the Eng- who first appears in La-Bas. ) He is
lish king.
The story opens with a stir- blasé, empty of motives of capacity for
ring picture of the turbulence and fury pleasure or endeavor. He takes to vis-
of the Flemings on learning of the ap- iting the churches; feels a certain spell
proach of the French army. Conscience produced by the ritual and music; and
shows in this novel that he was a close at length, drawn into the monastic re-
student of Sir Walter Scott. He has a treat of La Trappe, he becomes a con-
thorough knowledge of the manners as vert to religion, and dwells with delight
well as of the history of the period in and much fine analysis on his experi-
which its scenes are laid, and he has
ence of a kind of ecstasy of restraints,
been entirely successful in giving a a «frenzy of chastity. ” The story is
faithful and lifelike conception of Flan- autobiographic: the history of a soul.
ders in the thirteenth century.
It abounds in passages of great brill-
iancy and beauty; and in some of the
Blind, The (Les Aveugles”), by Mau- meditations on the inner meaning of the
rice Maeterlinck, the young Belgian ritual, and the effect of the music of
poet-dramatist, is a play of symbolism, the church, his interpretations will meet
which, like the earlier (The Intruder, with a very sympathetic response from
is one of the writer's best-known and
many readers.
His description of the
most striking works. It is an eerie kind
Breviary is a splendid piece of writing.
of allegory. On an island, in a mystic The book may be called a faithful ae-
norland wood, under the night stars, sit count of the ritualistic disease," as it
a company of blind folk, men and wo- affects the French mind. "It was not
men, under the guidance of an old priest so much himself advancing into the un-
returned from the dead. They grope
known, as the unknown surrounding,
about in a maze and query as to their penetrating, possessing him little by
location and destiny, - a strange, striking little. ” He closes suddenly with his en-
effect being produced by the grewsome tering into the (night obscure” of the
setting of the scene and the implication mystics. It is inexpressible. Nothing
of the words, through which the reader can reveal the anguish necessary to pass
gathers that this is a symbolic picture through to enter this mystic knowledge. ”
of life, in which mankind wanders with- The soul of the writer seems to think
out faith or sight in the forest of ignor- aloud in the pages of his book; he
ance and unfaith, depending upon frankly portrays his condition: (too
priesteraft that is defunct, and knowing much writer to become a monk; too
naught of the hereafter. The poetry and much monk to remain a writer. ” The
humanity of this picture-play are very reader remains in bt, after all
strong. A good English translation of whither the hero of the book is en route.
»
a
as
## p. 313 (#349) ############################################
SYNOPSES OF NOTED BOOKS
313
G"
hosts, a powerful play by Henrik head of the so-called school of natural-
Ibsen (1881), gives dramatic em- ism, has carried his theories farther than
bodiment to the modern realization of any of his disciples. In 1869 he began
heredity. Ibsen, treating this subject his task,- a study in hereditary influ-
on its tragic side, considers the case of ence, with a complete genealogical tree,
the darker passions as they are handed and a plan for twenty novels, - from
down from father to son. The fatalistic which very little variation is seen when
atmosphere of "Ghosts) resembles that of the series is completed twenty-two years
a Greek drama. It is a Greek tragedy after. Beginning with the Coup d'État
translated into the littleness and barren- in 1852, he ends his series with the
ness of modern life.
downfall of Napoleon III. , adding Doc-
Oswald Alving, the son of a dissipated, tor Pascal, which is a résumé of the
worthless father, has been brought up series. With the ancestors whom the
by his mother in ignorance of his dead author chooses for his characters we
parent's shame. Yet he has within him should perhaps expect that animal pas-
the seeds of a transmitted disease, - the sion would be the motive of most of
evil sown by a previous generation. He these novels; but one must charge M.
has gone into the world to make a name Zola with poor judgment or a departure
for himself, but he is forced to return to from the scientific spirit, when he places
his mother's home. He drinks to excess, a character, which by his own deduc-
and he exhibits tendencies to other more tions seems to show no trace of the
dangerous vices. His wretched mother family lesion, in La Terre, the
sees in him the ghost of his father; she coarsest one of the series — for Macquart
sees the old hateful life clothed in the is the most decent of the entire com-
form of the boy she has reared so care- munity. Whatever may have been the
fully. He himself feels the poison work- author's intention, the general public
ing in his veins. The play closes upon does not read his books as a study in
the first sign of his incipient madness. heredity. Each one is complete in itself;
In this drama, the mother, Mrs. Alving, and while in 1896 the first novel of the
is the type of the new woman in revolt series had reached a sale of only 31,000
against the hideous lies of society, be- copies, there had been sold
113,000
cause she has suffered through them. copies of La Terre, 176,000 of Nana,'
She is learning to think for herself; to and 187,000 of La Débâcle. ) The first
weigh social morality in the balances. to appear was La Fortune des Rou-
Her adviser, Pastor Manders, has been gons' (The Rougon Family: 1871). Ad-
called the consummate flower of con- elaide Fouqué, whose father was insane,
ventional morality. ” He is a type of was married in 1786 to Rougon, a dull,
the world's cautiousness and policy in easy-going gardener. After her hus-
matters ethical; of that world's disposi- band's death she had two illegitimate
tion to cover up or refuse to see the children, Antoine and Ursule, by Mac-
sins of society. He is of those who quart, a drunkard and a smuggler. The
make of marriage a talisman to juggle offspring of the marriage was Pierre
Rougon. By chicanery, Rougon obtains
(Ghosts) is perhaps the most remark- possession of the property, sells it, and
able of Ibsen's dramas in its search- through marriage with a daughter of a
ing judgment, its recognition of terrible merchant, enters into an old business
fact, its logical following of the merci- firm. Ursule is married to an honest
less logic of nature.
workman named Mouret; and Antoine,
who inherits his father's appetite for
Rouge
ougon-Macquart, Les, by Émile Zola. drink, marries a market-woman, also in-
There is perhaps no literary work temperate.
of the last part of the century that has (La Curée ) (Rush for the Spoil: 1872)
caused so much comment as this series is a study of the financial world of Paris
of twenty novels, relating the natural at the time Haussmann laid out the
and social history of a family under the boulevards. Aristide, son of Pierre, who
Second Empire. It is a phenomenon that has changed his name to Saccard, be-
cannot be ignored in a history of litera- comes immensely wealthy by political
ture, not only because of the variety of intrigue, - acting as straw-man for the
subjects treated, but from the fact that
government in the purchase of the prop-
the author, being the acknowledged erty needed to lay out the new boule-
away vice.
## p. 314 (#350) ############################################
314
SYNOPSES OF NOTED BOOKS
is the family representative. There are
fine descriptions of Paris seen from a
height, varying with the spiritual phases
of the characters.
Nana' (1880). A study of the life
of a courtesan and actress. Nana is
the daughter of Gervaise and the drunk-
ard Coupeau. She grows up in the
streets and disreputable haunts until she
comes under the notice of a theatre
manager. Her great physical beauty
attracts men of all classes, and none
resist her. The grandest names
soiled; and those who do not leave
with her their fortunes, leave their honor
or their life. The greatest fortunes are
dissipated by her, and yet at her door
is heard the continual ring of the cred-
itor. She contracts the black smallpox,
and dies deserted and wretched. The
description of her
her appearance
after
death is a shocking contrast to the pict-
of voluptuousness in the other
are
ures
scenes.
vards. He is helped by his elder brother
Eugène, who has entered political life.
La Conquête de Plassans) (The Con-
quest of Plassans: 1874). The struggle
for the control of a village in which the
Abbé Faujas obtains complete ascend-
ency over Marthe Rougon, who is mar-
ried to François Mouret. The latter,
accused of insanity, is placed in an asy-
lum, and finally becomes insane. Escap-
ing, he sets fire to his house, destroying
himself and the abbé therein.
(Le Ventre de Paris, (The Markets
of Paris; or, Fat and Thin: 1875). Lisa
Macquart is the member of the family
who, as a market-woman, furnishes op-
portunity for a detailed study of the
markets. Zola looks upon this work as
a sort of modern Iliad, the song of the
eternal battle between the lean of this
world and the fat. Of this book a
prominent critic said that he had been
able to read it only by holding his nose.
(La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret (The
Abbé's Temptation: 1875). A study of
the clergy, religious life, and mysticism,
in which Serge Mouret is the leading
character. It is almost needless to say
that the abbé does not resist tempta-
tion; but by repentance he is able later
to perform, with little perturbation, the
burial service over the woman he had
loved.
"Son Excellence Eugène Rougon) (His
Excellency Eugène Rougon: 1876). A
story of political life, in which are real-
istic descriptions of the Imperial Court,
of the functions of Prime Minister (Rou-
gon) and his cabinet, and a careful pen
picture of Napoleon III. , his manners
and customs.
L'Assommoir) (Drink: 1877). A
story of life among the workmen of
Paris, and of the killing effect which the
cheap drinking-shop has on them. Ger-
vaise, the daughter of Antoine, is the
character around whom the scenes re-
volve. It was this work which brought
Zola his reputation and fortune.
Une Page d'Amour) (A Love Epi-
sode: 1878). A physical and psycho-
logical study of the various phases of
a woman's passion. The struggle is
between her love for her child and her
passion for a doctor who has saved the
child's life. The night on which she
cedes herself to the doctor, the child,
looking from an open window for her
return, contracts a sickness from which
it dies. Hélène, the daughter of Ursule,
(Pot-Bouille) (Piping Hot: 1882). A
study of the life of the bourgeoisie.
Octave, the son of François Mouret,
comes to Paris determined to make his
fortune through women's love for him.
A study of life in the tenement flats,
where the skeletons of the different
family closets are made to dance for
our amusement, to the music of the
servants' quarrels ascending from the
kitchens.
(Au Bonheur des Dames) (The La-
dies' Paradise: 1883). A study of the
mammoth department stores. Octave,
by his marriage with the widow He-
douin, and her subsequent death, be-
proprietor of the shop.
A
description is given of the growth of
the business, of the struggle for exist-
by the smaller stores and of
their being swallowed up by the giant,
and of the entire routine of a great
comes
ence
store.
a
(La Joie de Vivre) (How Jolly Life
Is! ). Pauline Quenu, the daughter of
Lisa, is a foil to the character of Nana:
woman of well-balanced mind, giv-
ing up her lover to her friend, and
upon their separation, taking their child
and becoming its true mother. Always
triumphant and smiling, she is
sacrificing herself to the selfish, whin-
ing egoism of those who surround her.
(Germinal) (Master and Man: 1885).
A study of life in the mines. The
illegitimate son of Gervaise, Étienne
ever
## p. 315 (#351) ############################################
SYNOPSES OF NOTED BOOKS
315
wealth, starts the “Banque Universelle »
for the exploitation of different schemes
in the Orient. A description is given
of the unscrupulous methods employed
to float great schemes. Saccard's bank
becomes the leading institution of the
stock exchange. Subscriptions pour in
by the million, - widows, orphans, and
millionaires fighting to get the shares;
and Saccard is the financial ruler, rolling
in wealth and luxury. Then comes the
struggle with the bears, the final de-
feat, and the ruin of the investors.
(La Débâcle) (The Downfall: 1892).
A study of the Franco-Prussian War and
the Siege of Paris. Napoleon III. again
enters on the scene, in the most degrad-
ing and belittling position imaginable.
Jean Macquart is the hero of the tale.
"Le Docteur Pascal' (1892). Pascal
Rougon, son of Pierre, has collected all
the data relating to his family, and
sums up their history. Adelaide Fouqué
is insane; Eugène, a deputy to Congress;
Saccard, an editor; Octave, a successful
merchant; Jean Macquart, married again
and father of a healthy family. Doctor
Pascal diagnoses his own mortal disease,
hour by hour; and as he feels the last
moment approaching, jumps from his
bed, adds the date and cause of his
death to the genealogical tree, as well
as the birth of his illegitimate child by
his niece, in the words, “Unknown child
to be born in 1894. What will it be ? )))
Lanier, a socialist, is forced to work
in the mines. Low wages and fines
cause a strike, of which Lanier is one
of the leaders. He counsels modera-
tion; but hunger drives the miners to
desperation, and force is met by force.
Several are killed, Lanier is deported,
and the miners fall back into their old
slavery. This work is generally con-
sidered to be the author's best.
(L'Euvre) (Labor: 1886). A study
of artist life. Claude Lanier, illegiti-
mate son of Gervaise, a painter with a
vivid power of conception, lacking the
power of execution; and, in despair of
attaining his ideal, hangs himself before
an unfinished picture.
(La Terre) (The Soil: 1888). A study
of peasant life and the greed for land; a
greed which causes hatred between sis-
ters, neglect of parents, and ends in the
murder of Jean Macquart's wife by her
sister. This story abounds in vulgarity,
and the brutish instincts of the peasants
make them lower than the beasts that
surround them. It has aroused
opposition than any other of his works.
(Le Rêve) (The Dream: 1888). This
has been likened to a fairy story; and it
is said Zola wrote it in deference to the
sentiment against his admission to the
Academy, to show that his strength did
not wholly lie in «realism. ” Angelique,
the illegitimate daughter of Sidonie
Rougon, is placed in a foundling asy-
lum, and adopted by a family whose
occupation is the making of church vest-
ments. She dreams of her prince, who
soon presents himself in the person of a
painter of church windows, who is really
the son of a bishop who took orders
after his wife's death. He opposes his
son's marriage to a woman of the lower
classes; but consents when called to ad-
minister the last sacrament to Angelique,
and she dies in her husband's arms.
(La Bête Humaine) (Human Brutes:
1890). A study of railway life, in which
Jacques Lanier, a locomotive engineer,
inherits the family lesion in the form
of a maniacal desire to murder women.
There is a stirring description of
struggle on a moving locomotive be-
tween Lanier and his drunken fireman,
in which both are precipitated under the
wheels, and the express train is left to
drive along without check.
( L'Argent) (Money: 1891). A study
of stock speculation and “wild-cat» com-
panies. Aristide Saccard, having lost his
more
Salammbo,. . . by
Gustave Flaubert.
(1864. ) This historical romance was
the fruit of M. Flaubert's visit to the
ruins of old Carthage, and is a kind of
revivification of the ancient capital and
its people. The scenes testify to the
great erudition of the author, but critics
complain that the picture has too little
perspective. All is painted with equal
brilliance -matter essential and unes-
sential.
The sacred garment of Tanit is made
the object around which the action re-
volves; and the fate of Carthage is
bound up in the preservation of this
vestment within her walls. The central
point of the story is the boundless pas-
sion of Matho, a common soldier among
the mercenaries, for Salammbô, the
beautiful daughter of the great Hamil-
car; and the fate of the vestment of
Tanit continually overshadows the fate
of his love. By a mad act of daring,
he gets possession
of the carefully
a
## p. 316 (#352) ############################################
316
SYNOPSES OF NOTED BOOKS
school somewhat like the Dotheboys
Hall made famous by Dickens, until his
final release from a bed in the char-
ity hospital. He becomes dull, sickly,
inert; but his finer qualities die hard,
and are perhaps only latent even during
his worst days of labor in an iron foun-
dry, and of fevered exhaustion as stoker
on an ocean steamer. But life never
becomes quite hopeless; for love and
sympathy reach even to Jack, and offer
him a partial compensation. After the
publication of Jack, Daudet wrote a
sketch of the original of the hero; for in
its main outline the story is a true one.
Here, as usual, he took a framework of
fact, upon which his poetic instinct and
sympathetic imagination reared a mem-
orable work of art.
guarded treasure, and through its influ-
ence on the popular mind, heads a rising
of the troops, who proceed against Car-
thage. Urged on by the High Priest,
Salammbô is persuaded that it is her
sacred duty to recover the stolen vest-
ment, and so bring back the protection
of the goddess to the arms of Carthage.
Under his instruction, she is led secretly
by night to the tent of Matho to obtain
the vestment. Obedient to the pontiff,
she endures the soldier's wild transports
of joy, and succeeds in carrying away
the vestment, which in his self-forget-
ting adoration he has wrapped about
her. Fortune returns to the Carthagin-
ians, the rebellious leader is taken, and
Salammbô's wedding to the man of her
father's choice is made the scene of
Matho's martyrdom. Looking down at
the torn and dying man, whose eyes
alone retain the semblance of humanity,
Salammbô suddenly recalls the tender
babble of those agonized lips, the adora-
tion of those eyes on that night in his
tent. She realizes what this man has
suffered for love of her, and her heart
breaks. In the act of drinking the wine
her bridegroom offers, she sinks back
dead. And thus the two beings whose
touch has profaned the garment of
Tanit pass from the earth. The most
brilliant of romances dealing with the
classic world, this story holds its place
through all variations of popular taste,
among the masterpieces of fiction.
Jack, by Alphonse Daudet (1876), is a
story of experience and emotion.
Less skillful treatment would have made
so tragical a tale revolting. But Daudet
does not content himself with cold psy-
chological analysis or brilliant exposition
of character. His dominant quality is a
passionate sympathy, which communi-
cates itself to his readers, and forces
them to share his pity or anger or ad-
miration. Jack, introduced to us as a
pretty boy, beautifully dressed, might
have lived an adequate life but for his
light and selfish mother. He is sacri-
ficed to her moral weakness, and to the
bitter selfishness of his stepfather D'Ar-
genton. The latter, a noble idealist in
theory, while petty and base in practice,
is jealous of this inconvenient, superfluous
Jack, and thrusts him outside the home.
Jack's life is a long martyrdom, from
his homesick days with the little black
King of Dahomey, in a nondescript
a
Problematic Characters (“Problema-
tische Naturen'), a romance by
Friedrich Spielhagen. (3 vols. , 1860. )
For this, his first important production,
Spielhagen chose as motto a quotation
from Goethe, in which is to be found
the underlying thought of the romance:
« There are problematical natures which
are not equal to the conditions among
which they are placed, and whom no
conditions satisfy.
Thence arises the
monstrous conflict which consumes life
without enjoyment. ” In the narrative,
the strongest illustration of this class
of persons is the character of Oswald
Stein, the hero. He is introduced as
private tutor in a noble family; as
man of good, honorable, and kindly in-
tentions, and of much personal charm.
But the development of the story shows
him to lack one essential trait, the
absence of which his courage and his
warmth prove insufficient to the de-
mands of duty; he is inconstant. The
three volumes lead him from one
periment in the realm of sentiment to
another,— his most striking experience
involving Melitta, a beautiful and warm-
hearted lady of rank in the neighbor-
hood. Oswald proves himself incapable
of a real fidelity and lasting affection
towards any
of the fair beings who
lavish their hearts upon him.
One of
them says of him that he is fickle sim-
ply because he forever pursues an
attainable ideal, and is forever disap-
pointed! This aspiring and sympathetic
soul arouses sympathy, however, only in
his character of faithful and brotherly
friend to his charge, Bruno. Bruno
ex-
un-
## p. 317 (#353) ############################################
SYNOPSES OF NOTED BOOKS
317
himself is another problematic character,
but he is not called upon to set his fit-
ful temper and stormy heart against the
hard necessities of life: he dies while
still a loving, heroic, moody boy, little
understood, and loved by few. At his
death, Oswald departs for fresh scenes;
and the conclusion of the romance is
not at all a conclusion of the action,
which is reached in a later novel.
to help him, with Mary St. John at their
head. After waiting so many years, he
at last finds his father, sunk to the low-
est depth of poverty and degradation.
He gradually wins his affection, and re-
stores him to health. They start for
India together; but the ship is lost, and
they are never heard from again.
This is not at all a story of action,
nor is it told with great skill: it is
mainly an account of the growth of
Robert's soul. His strong good-sense,
courage, and helpfulness, are shown.
The story has the decided metaphysical
character of all Macdonald's stories.
coner
Old Sir Douglas, by the Hon. Mrs.
comes
Robert Falconer, a story, by George
Macdonald. (1875. ) Robert Fal.
is brought up by his grand-
mother in a little Scotch town. His
mother had died when he was too young
to remember her. His father was worth-
less and dissipated, and had left home
when Robert was a mere child. The
most vivid impression of Robert's youth,
an impression that colored the whole
course of his life, is his grandmother's
anguish over her son; whose soul, ac-
cording to her rigid Scotch theology, is
lost forever. Robert grows up with the
settled purpose of finding and reclaim-
ing his father. His youth is outwardly
uneventful, but he early revolts against
the theology of his grandmother, and
his doubts of the existence of God cause
him great mental struggles. His neigh-
bor, Mary St. John, a calm, high-souled
woman, exerts a great refining influ-
ence over him. He develops a talent for
music, and learns secretly to play on
his grandfather's violin; but Mrs. Fal-
coner, his grandmother, finding the violin
in Robert's possession, burns it as an
instrument of the Devil. When Robert
goes to Aberdeen to college, his protégé,
a poor boy nicknamed Shargar, follows
him, and the two live together with the
rigid economy so frequent among Scotch
students. In Aberdeen, Robert meets
the man who has the deepest influence
over him, Eric Ericson, and his father's
friend Dr. Anderson. Eric is troubled
by the same doubts as Robert; and be-
ing of a more sensitive, fiery nature, is
even more distressed thereby. Eric wins
the heart of Mary St. John, who has
always been Robert's divinity; but he
dies before they can be married. Rob-
ert travels, and studies medicine for five
years. Dr. Anderson, at his death, has
left Robert his property; and the latter
returns to Scotland, and then goes to
London. There he spends his time and
money helping the poor, and soon has
a company of earnest men and women
Norton (1871. ) The thread of
plot which this story follows is this:
By the death of his father, a Scotch
gentleman, Douglas Ross
into
possession of a large estate; and by the
death of his only brother immediately
afterwards, is made the guardian of a
nephew, Kenneth, legitimatized on that
brother's death-bed. The boy inherits
his father's profligate tendencies, and as
he grows to manhood becomes a daily
anxiety to his uncle. It is in Italy,
where he has been called by Kenneth's
bad conduct, that Sir Douglas meets
and marries Gertrude Skifton, who has
already refused Kenneth, and is made
most unhappy by his unkindness. The
scene changes to Glenrossie, the Scot-
tish home where the conditions are not
improved, but made harder by the pres-
ence of a malignant stepsister. Good
deeds, however, bear fruit as surely as
evil ones. From this point the com-
plications multiply, and many calamities
threaten; but the blameless lives of Sir
Douglas and his gentle wife do not
close in darkness. The story is one of
the battle of life waged in an obscure
corner of the world: interesting because
it is typical; realistic almost to the point
of offense, were it not that its realism
is not willful but subserves an end.
rey Days and Gold, by William
Winter, is a record of the author's
wanderings in England and Scotland,
and of his impressions of beauty in those
countries. In the preface he writes:
«The supreme need of this age in
America is a practical conviction that
progress does not consist in material
prosperity, but in spiritual advancement.
Utility has long been exclusively wor-
shiped. The welfare of the future lies
Grey
## p. 318 (#354) ############################################
318
SYNOPSES OF NOTED BOOKS
in the worship of beauty. To that wor-
ship these pages are devoted. The
book is written with the enthusiasm of
one to whom a new world has opened.
Because the author sees his England
with undimmed eyes, what he says of
it is fresh and vital and original. The
classic shrines of England, the haunts
of Moore, old York, Bath, and Worces-
ter, Stratford, London, and Edinburgh,
become new places and new cities seen
for the first time. In this summer light
of appreciation the entire volume is
steeped. It is written in an intimate
conversational style, with the warmth
of one who must share his pleasant
memories with others.
a
woman.
Log-Book of a Fisherman and Zoolo-
gist, by Frank Buckland. (1875. )
The chapters of this book were origi-
nally published as articles in the period-
ical Land and Water. They all have
some bearing on zoology; and possess
such titles as Exhibitions Outside the
Cattle Show,' King Charles the First's
Parrot,' Foot of Napoleon's Charger,'
(Fish at Great Grimsby Docks,' (Sing-
ing Mice,' (Experience of a Whitstable
Diver,' (The Woodpecker and the Bit-
tern,' (Reminiscences of Natural History
in Scotland,' My Monkeys,' etc. The
book is agreeable light reading; always
entertaining, and often instructive. In
the chapter on Horseflesh Dinner at
the Langham Hotel, the author's oppo-
sition to hippophagy is recorded; while
the chapter on Dinner of American
Game at the Langham Hotel is duly
appreciative. The account of a fight
between a scorpion and a mouse, in
which the mouse comes off victorious, is
very curious. The essayist is a firm be-
liever in the value of observation. He
thinks the education of the present day
is too much restricted to book-learning,
taking quite too much for granted the
authority of whatever ideas and opinions
obtain the authenticity of print. Adults,
even more than the young, he thinks,
should be not only trained to observe
and impress exact images of objects on
the memory, but to use their fingers in
analyzing and drawing, and above all,
in dissecting beasts, birds, and fishes, so
as to understand their wonderful struct-
and mechanism. Few naturalists
have united exact knowledge and minute
observation with so agreeable a faculty
of description as has Mr. Buckland.
Master; The, by . . Zangwill. (1895. )
This story is the biography of an
artist; and in it the reader is led to an
artist's London, and wanders through an
artist's world. From early boyhood the
ruling passion of Matthew Strang's life
is a love of art and a desire to paint
pictures. A poor boy, struggling against
poverty and misfortune, he ever keeps
this goal in view. Overwhelmed by
want and suffering, he marries a young
woman his intellectual inferior, but pos-
sessed of a small competency by which
he is enabled to pursue his beloved vo-
cation. He becomes a great artist; and
the distance widens between him and
his commonplace wife, who has no ap-
preciation of his work or ideals. Mat-
thew Strang is courted by distinguished
people, and breathes an atmosphere that
intensifies the contrast with his own
home, which he rarely visits. He is
thrown into the society of Eleanor Wynd-
wood, beautiful and accomplished
She is his ideal, and he falls
in love with her. He feels that in-
spired by her companionship he could
achieve the highest success. Eleanor
returns his love; and Strang is on the
point of forgetting all but his passion
for her, when he is suddenly awakened
to the realization that his highest duty
lies in the renunciation of his desires.
He goes back to his nagging, prosaic
wife, and irritating household, having
bid farewell to his love and art. But
the latter is not to be taken leave of;
for, away from the whirl of society and
in the solitude of his out-of-town studio,
he toils to accomplish his best work.
Here “the master » at last produces his
greatest pictures; here he becomes not
only master of his art, but “master of
his own soul. ” Throughout the book
the point of view is profoundly poetic,
and the character of the master is
developed with truly masterly skill: as
are also the portraits of Billy, the art-
ist's deformed brother; the sharp-tongued
Rosina, his wife and his foster-sister,
steadfast Ruth Hailey, whose gentle in-
fluence and self-effacing love are con-
trasted with the more selfish affection of
the impressionable and impulsive Eleanor.
The book is filled with clever epigram-
matic phrases, and abounds in humor.
ure
by Charles Gibbon.
(1873. ) The scene of this clever
story is laid in Scotland, at a place not
Robin Gray
## p. 319 (#355) ############################################
SYNOPSES OF NOTED BOOKS
319
upon L
far from Ayr. Opportunity is thus
given for a very good sketch of Scotch
life and character. The book derives
its name from one of the central fig-
ures, Robin Gray, a farmer, who mar-
ries the daughter of a fisherman. She,
Jeanie Lindsay, was engaged to one
James Falcon, supposed to have been
lost at sea. Falcon returns; and through
jealous blindness Robin Gray is led to
believe that his wife is about to run
away with Falcon, with whom he quar-
rels. On the same night a murder is
committed, and suspicion falls
Gray. Through the devotion of his
wife, Gray is cleared, and the mur-
derer brought to justice. Most of the
mischief is caused by Nicol M'Whap-
ple, whose iniquities assume huge pro-
portions as the story proceeds. He is
the Laird of Clashgirn, and is found
to have unlawfully come into posses-
sion of the estate, which in fact be-
longs to Falcon, whose real name is
Sutherland. M’Whapple endeavors in
several different ways to get Falcon
killed, and the quarrel between Falcon
and Gray is caused by M'Whapple's
intrigues. When at last his villainy is
exposed, he conveniently dies, and saves
the reader from the pain of a trial and
execution. In the end, Robin Gray
and his wife are reconciled: and Fal-
con, or Sutherland, who has become
Laird of Clashgirn, goes away for a six-
years' voyage; from which he returns
reconciled to the loss of his love, and
finds another love.
questions of responsibilities which arise,
deaf to moral obligations and the rights
of others, coquetting with the affections
of the girl Phemie Sims, with whose
family he resides at Etowah Cove, play-
ing a daily farce to the eyes of the sim-
ple mountaineers, his existence implies
a double meaning in the title, - juggler
of morals, juggler of emotions, juggler of
self-respect and manhood. The study of
character made in this book is fresh and
honest, and the story is interesting.
Lor
ove Me Little, Love Me Long, was
published in 1857.
In this story,
Charles Reade turned away from his
wonted exposition of social abuses to
write a love story, pure and simple. It
is a pleasant study of upper middle-class
English life. Lucy Fountain, a young
heiress, has two guardians - her uncle
Mr. Fountain, and Mr. Bazalgette the
husband of her mother's half-sister; and
she divides the year between their two
homes. She is pretty, charming, and
useful; and both Uncle Fountain and
Aunt Bazalgette want to establish her
close at hand by choosing a husband
for her. But Lucy is indifferent both to
Mr. Hardy, the banker selected by her
aunt, and Mr. Talboys, the man of an-
cient lineage who is favored by her
uncle. She falls in love with David
Dodd, a manly young sailor in the
merchant service, who loves her, but
who recognizes her social superiority,
while he is forced to admit that his
Lucy is freakish,- now kind, now cold.
To escape importunity at home, she
runs away and stays with her old nurse,
where David discovers and wins her.
They have a few blissful weeks together
before David Sails on the Rajah, of
which through Lucy's influence he has
been made captain. The story is sim-
ple, but full of homely incident, clever
dialogue, shrewd character-drawing, and
overflowing humor.
With its sequel,
(Very Hard Cash, it is considered
among
the best of Reade's novels,
Lucy herself is the type of
oftenest drawn by Reade, - pretty, emo-
tional, noble at heart, but given to co-
quettish deceits and uncertain moods,
until steadied by love.
Marjorie Daw, by Thomas Bailey Ald-
rich. The well-known story of Mar-
jorie Daw is developed through the cor-
respondence of two young men, named
respectively John Flemming and Edward
>
Juggler, The, by Charles Egbert Crad-
. The story departs in some
degree from the traditions of Miss Mur-
free, though her scenes are still laid in
the Tennessee mountains. Her hero,
Lucien Royce, is not only an amateur
athlete of renown, but he can do tricks
of legerdemain, and he possesses other
fascinating accomplishments. Being in-
trusted by his firm with a large sum of
money, and losing it in a shipwreck, he
dares not return to his home in the
city, fearing that his story will not be
believed. He is reported dead; and
fleeing to the Cumberland Mountains,
weakly accepts the
fate has
offered. His reputed death causes many
complications. A valuable property is
held on life tenure,— his being the life
chosen, a compliment to athletic
reputation. Shilly-shallying with the
woman
excuse
## p. 320 (#356) ############################################
320
SYNOPSES OF NOTED BOOKS
Delaney. The latter seeks to relieve
the tedium of his friend's sick-room by
a description of his neighbor, Marjorie
Daw. He paints her charms in glow-
ing colors, and enlarges upon her at-
tractions, the wealth of her father, and
the delightful colonial mansion in which
she dwells. Flemming, who is com-
pletely fascinated with his friend's de-
scription, falls in love with the maiden,
and presses Delaney for more and more
particulars, which he generously fur-
nishes, until he has convinced Flem-
ming that Marjorie has been led to
reciprocate his feelings. The critical
moment at last arrives when Flemming,
having sufficiently recovered, telegraphs
that he intends to press his suit in per-
son. His friend, now realizing how seri-
ous the affair has become, endeavors
frantically to prevent Flemming from
carrying out his purpose; but finding
his efforts unavailing, he departs hastily
from town, leaving a note of explana-
tion behind him. Flemming arrives, re-
ceives Delaney's note, and encounters
the surprise of his life. This short
story was first published in 1873, and
is a very characteristic piece of Mr.
Aldrich's clever workmanship.
Italian Journeys, by W. D. Howells,
is the record of leisurely excursions
up and down the land,- to Padua, Fer-
rara, Genoa, Pompeii, Naples, Rome,
and many other towns of picturesque
buildings and melodious names, from
Capri to Trieste. Mr. Howells knows
his Italy so well, that though he writes
as a foreigner, he is in perfect sympathy
with his subject. He knows the inn-
keepers, guides, and railway men to be
dead to truth and honesty, but he likes
them; and he knows that Tasso's prison
never held Tasso, and that the history
of most of the historic places is purely
legendary, but he delights to believe in
them all. He sees in the broken col.
umns and fragmentary walls of Pompeii
all the splendor of the first century, that
time of gorgeous wealth; and in an old
house at Arquá, he has a vision of
Petrarch writing at his curious carved
table. In crumbling Herculaneum his
spirit is touched to wistful sympathy by
a garden of wild flowers: Here — where
so long ago the flowers had bloomed,
and perished in the terrible blossoming
of the mountain that sent up its awful
fires in the awful similitude of Nature's
harmless and lovely forms, and show-
ered its destroying petals all abroad -
was it not tragic to find again the soft
tints, the graceful shapes, the sweet
perfumes, of the earth's immortal life?
Of them that planted and tended and
plucked and bore in their bosoms and
twined in their hair these fragile child-
ren of the summer, what witness in the
world ? Only the crouching skeletons un-
der the tables - Alas and alas! ” His
love of the beautiful is tempered by a
keen sense of humor; and the combina-
tion makes his volume a delightful
record, with the sunshine of Italy shut
between its covers.
Foregone Conclusion, A, by W. D.
Howells, (1875,) one of his earlier
and simpler novels, relates the love story
of Florida Vervain, a young girl sojourn-
ing in Venice with her mother, an
amiable, weak-headed woman, of the type
so frequently drawn by the author. The
daughter is beloved by the l’nited States
consul, a Mr. Ferris, and by Don Ippo-
polito, a priest. The latter is a strongly
drawn, interesting study. He is a man
whom circumstances rather than inclina-
tion led into the priesthood. From the
hour of his ordination he finds the holy
office an obstacle to his normal develop-
ment. He has the genius of the in-
ventor; has spent years in perfecting
impossible models. Florida Vervain be-
comes his pupil in Italian. Her young
enthusiasm leads her to believe that if
Don Ippolito were only in America his
inventions would receive fruitful recogni-
'tion. She proposes that he accompany
her and her mother to Providence. He,
in the first joy of the prospect, declares
his love for her. She is horror-stricken
because he is a priest ); and her re-
fusal of him eventually brings about his
death. These events open the eyes of
Ferris, whose jealousy of the poor priest
had led him into a sullen attitude to-
wards the woman he loved.
The novel, despite a happy ending,
is overshadowed by the tragic central
figure of Don Ippolito. The priest and
the girl are remarkably vivid, well-drawn
characters. There is just enough of the
background of Venice to give color to
the story.
Almayer's Folly, by Joseph Conrad, is
a novel of Eastern life, whose scene
is laid on a little-known river of Borneo,
and whose personages are fierce Malays,
a
## p. 321 (#357) ############################################
SYNOPSES OF NOTED BOOKS
32 1
$
cunning Arabs, stolid Dutch traders, Percival himself, in the same event, will
slaves, half-breeds, pirates, and white receive the whole of Laura's fortune.
renegades. Almayer, the son of a Dutch Laura had pledged her dead father to
official in Java, has been adopted in a marry Sir Percival, but she has no love
sort of way by one Captain Lingard, a for him. Marian Halcombe goes with
disreputable English adventurer, who per- her to Blackwater Park. There, in the
suades him to marry a Malay girl, whom form of a diary, she carries on the nar-
also he has adopted, the sole survivor rative where Walter Hartright discon-
of a crew of Malay pirates sent by Lin- tinued it. A plot is hatched by Count
gard to their last account. The story is
Fosco, who is
strong villain, and by
crowded with adventure, and the charac- Sir Percival, who is a weak one, to get
ters stand out, living creatures, against a Laura out of the way and obtain her
gorgeous tropical background. But its money, by taking advantage of the re-
merit lies in its careful rendering of
semblance between her and Anne Cath-
race traits, and in its study of that dry- erick, who at the time is very ill. By
rot of character, indecision, irresolution, a series of devices Laura is brought to
procrastination. It is quite plain that the London, and put into an asylum as
sins Mr. Conrad imputes to his frustrate Anne Catherick; while the dying Anne
ghosts) are the unlit lamp and the un- Catherick is called Lady Glyde, and
girt loin. )
after her death buried as Lady Glyde.
These events are told by the various
Woman in White, The, an early and actors in the drama. By the efforts of
notable novel by Wilkie Collins, Marian, who does not believe that her
was published in 1873. Like his other sister is dead, she is rescued from the
works of fiction, it is remarkable for the asylum. Walter Hartright, seeking to
admirable manner in which its intricate expose Sir Percival's villainy, discovers
plot is worked out. The narrative is that he is sharing a secret with Anne
told by the different characters of the Catherick's mother; that Anne knew the
story in succession. The first narrator secret, and had therefore been confined
is Walter Hartright, a drawing-master, in an asylum by the pair: the secret
who has been employed by Mr. Fred- being that Sir Percival had no right
erick Fairlie of Limmeridge House, in to his title, having been born out of
Cumberland, England, to teach drawing wedlock. Before Hartright can expose
to his nieces, Laura Fairlie and her this fraud, Sir Percival himself is
half-sister Marian Halcombe. Laura burned to death, while tampering with
bears strange resemblance to
the register of the church for his own
woman who had accosted him
interest. In the general clearing-up of
lonely road near London, - a
affairs, it
becomes
known that the
clothed entirely in white; who, he after- Woman in White was the half-sister of
wards discovers, is an Anne Catherick, Laura, being the natural child of her
supposed to be half-witted, and, when father Philip Fairlie.
he met her, just escaped from an asy- The story ends with the happy mar-
lum. In her childhood Anne had been riage of Laura to Hartright, and with
befriended by Laura's mother, Mrs. the restoration of her property.
Fairlie, because of her resemblance to
Laura, and by her had been dressed in
Armadale, by Wilkie Collins 1866. The
white, which Anne had worn ever since
, The
in memory of her benefactress.
