LITMIR.BIZ

'Miss Bellard's Inspiration' has a charm altogether out of proportion to its pretensions. It is no more than a novelette in dimensions, and its story is of the simplest. but displays in the telling a very delicate art. There are six people concerned – Miss Ballard and her fiancé, the aunt and uncle with whom they spend a few days in the country, and a married couple who are their guests by chance. This couple proves to be singularly mismated, and the spectacle afforded by their bickerings so alarms the heroine that she discards her lover, lest some such future may be in store for them also. She speaks by way of explanation, about 'that strange sort of feeling I had that we would be like them, if we married, and that there was not room in the world for two such quarrelsome couples' Later on, when the jangling pair have reached the point of imminent divorce, the rejected lover makes the following plea for a resumption of the old relations: 'If they are separated for good and all, don't you see that it gives us our chance?' The argument is convincing, and these are the words in which the heroine describes her capitulation: 'The point was a very fine one, and I kept losing it; but he never did; and he held me to it, so that when he did go away, I promised him that I would think about it. I did think about it, and before morning I had a perfect inspiration. My inspiration was that when I was so helpless to reason it out for myself, I ought to leave it altogether to him, and that is why we are going to be married in the spring.' This is the orthodox conclusion, if brought about by whimsical means, but we cannot escape a certain concern for the young man's future.

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It is safe to say that Mr. Howells would rather have this book judged as a study in sociology than as a novel of no matter how deep a romantic interest. The earnestness with which the subject has been studied obviously supplements a habit of observation that is conscious and trained. Perhaps, then, it were best to say in the beginning that Mr. Howells' book has two distinct attributes, between which it is a difficult matter to judge in respect to value: the fine literary quality is so wonderfully pervasive that the reader is con strained to label this a romance of distinction and interest; On the other hand, the treatment of the sociological theme is so keen, clever, and pointedly ironic, and the substance matter has so much of ac curacy and the convincing, that it must be admitted without parley that here is a work to place side by side with the Utopian visions of the world—with the work of More, and of Sidney, with that of Bellamy and Wells, conceding as regards the last two a decided advantage in the point of masterly writing. 'Through the Eye of the Needle' is divided into two sections. The first comprises letters written from America to Altruria by an Altrurian citizen who has come to this country to study conditions. Altruria, let it be said, is an idealistic commonwealth. Part two of the book consists of letters written by an American woman from Altruria, whither she has gone as the wife of the Altrurian. Naturally, customs and institutions in that country are as strange to her as were our customs and institutions to her husband when he visited the United States. In good truth, however, America is at no point spared in the minute analysis of her various phases and aspects. Our friend the Altrurian starts out in his very first sentence : If I spoke with Altrurian breadth of the way New Yorkers live, I should begin by saying that the New Yorkers did not live at all. After which he discourses upon the subject of apartment houses, the servant problem, the enigma of the newly rich, and the other attributes and adornments of our «advanced civilization.» There is no sparing and no condoning, yet the spirit of it all is benevolently broad, and the genial but gently ironic Mr. Howells is scarcely disguised in the charity-saturated criticisms of the observant and knowing Altrurian traveler. Perhaps the most appreciable bit of work in the volume is Mr. Howells' introduction, with its mild poking of fun, and its delightful little spurts of sarcasm. The whole book means a good deal more than do most of the average books of fiction that are so constantly our portion; and even if one may not be in the mood for serious reading, and the thinking that a thoughtful book compels, there is enough of pleasantry and heart interest, and delightful character study in this volume to provide diversion, and quiet, restful entertainment. The compensation of Mr. Howells' books is that they prove good company, for the author's own genial self, with all that mellowness of refinement and culture that is his, gives life's blood to his volumes.

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A companion volume to 'London Films', in which Mr. Howells writes of Bath, Oxford, Canterbury and other delightful English towns, with glimpses of the country in between. The author catches the true spirit and dominant tone of each locality, and he regales the reader with various little adventures along the road. Mr. Howells is especially alert for details that link English history with our own, and have a special interest for the American traveler.

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With that genially serious attention to minute details, that humorous circumstantiality in treating the commonplace, which we have all come to know so well and to like (or dislike) so heartily in Mr. Howells, he has filled a substantial volume with his easily-flowing narrative of a Mediterranean vacation journey, naming his book 'Roman Holidays and Others.' The first landing of his party was made at Madeira, whence they proceeded to Gibraltar, and then to Genoa, Naples, Rome, Leghorn, Pisa, Genoa again, and Monte Carlo. The style of the narrative – if it is necessary to indicate it at all – is well illustrated by the opening words of the second chapter: «There is nothing strikes the traveler in his approach to the rock of Gibraltar so much as its resemblance to the trade-mark of the Prudential Insurance Company. He cannot help feeling that the famous stronghold is pictorially a plagiarism from the advertisements of that institution.» Mr. Howells says of the Romans of these days that they have «a republican simplicity of manner, and I liked this better in the shop people and work people than the civility overflowing into servility which one finds among the like folk, for instance, in England.»

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In 'London Films' Mr. Howells certainly maintains his deserved reputation. His delightful essays are characterized by a genial sympathy quite unlike any other author's of the present time. It is this sympathy with his subject that gives the charm to the book. There is a broad indefiniteness or lack of mathematical accuracy that gives a pleasing literary tone to the book. He writes of the royal family, its movements and customs, although confessing the royal family has rarely come his way. Mr. Howells is decidedly pro-British. In many respects they excel us. He calls the appearance of the English dames authorized rather than authoritative, and says the dignity of the old people of both sexes is not matched in America. In its buildings and effects London excels New York. The dress of the English girl is contrasted with that of the American. Mr. Howells finds the American girl has more chic and the English more sentiment. His preference is clearly for the sentiment. While granting the sentiment in the English girl's dress to exceed the American girl's, you still have the choice of whether you want all that sentiment or not. The difference in dress is certainly an expression of the general difference in English and American character. Americans in general will probably let the sentiment go. Of course, as regards style Mr. Howells stands, with some few others, at the top of the writers of today.

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Mr. Howells dips into psychological twilight in this volume of short stories. They are queer and creepy without being exactly supernatural. In «Editha» there is a war story of a new kind, although its heroine is the same old, inconsequent and exasperating girl that Mr. Howells has drawn for so many years, he could probably do it with his eyes shut by this time. «It all interested her intensely; she was undergoing a tremendous experience and she was being equal to it!» And so with the egotistic cruelty of youth she sends her lover to his death and has to face his mother afterward. The other tales are less tragic, and told as Mr. Howells alone can tell such small comedies, by means of conversations among intimate friends, with the graceful give and take of actual dialog, as the group discuss the affairs of their friends with after-dinner philosophic interest.

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One of the greatest rewards which literary fame has to give must be the power which it lends an author of being on intimate terms with his public. An author has won his spurs, his public know and love him, and he can then, if he will, talk to them in print as he might chat with friends. Trivial subjects become important because he chooses to write about them. He is at ease with his readers, so much so that he can drop all formality and discuss questions of the day, or tell them what he saw in a morning walk, or what he thinks on this or that literary subject, in much the same tone of voice that he might discuss the same things at his breakfast-table. It must be a pleasure to do this. It must be enjoyable to feel that one has the right to ramble from one topic to another, unchecked by the question which confronts a young author whether the topic of which he writes is « timely» or « vital.» In the hands of a master, any subject is both timely and vital. He may write about that which interests himself, and he may be sure it will interest others. In his book 'Literature and Life', Mr. Howells has allowed himself all latitude in the choice of the subjects of the essays which compose the books. Lest some readers should not understand exactly what motive threw some random impressions of the horse show and an essay on the relation of the young contributor to the editor between the same covers, Mr. Howells has explained in his preface: « I have never been able to see much difference between what seemed to me Literature and what seemed to me Life. . . . Out of this way of thinking and feeling about these two great things, about Literature and Life, there may have arisen a confusion as to which is which. But I do not wish to part them, and in their union I have found since I learned my letters a joy in them both which I hope will last till I forget my letters.» The joy which Mr. Howells has felt in « these two great things,» he has conveyed in his writing. One feels that it was work which it gave him pleasure to do. It is one of those books where the author permits one to make his acquaintance; as he lingers over the book, the reader receives the impression that he had listened to someone talking rather than that he had been reading a printed page. It is certain that Mr. Howells is one of the few writers who can produce such work. These essays approach in spirit and in form the French feuilleton which, in the hands of such men as Anatole France, has attained such perfection.

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A group of people from Boston and inland towns of Iowa and New York spent the three months between December and March, 1901 – 1902, in New York City for different reasons. Their «letters home» to various relations and friends tell an ingenious story. The fascination of the great city tells upon them all, and excellent descriptions of the turn-of-the-century New York appear in all the letters.

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W. D. Howells is quite in his best vein in 'The Kentons.' Like all of his work, this possesses that quality which we expect in a classic, but rarely look for and more rarely find in contemporary fiction, of repaying the closest and most minute reading, and it is this fact which seems most surely to guarantee a long life to his books. It is of no use to gallop through Mr. Howells; the habitual gallopers invariably find him dull and wonder what his admirers see in him. The proper way to enjoy him is to have or get a sense of humor, and then to settle down in the most leisurely of moods to chuckle over the delicate irony, the sly little digs, the genial humor of his pages. Possibly the taste for W. D. Howells, like the taste for Henry James, is natural rather than acquired, but it is to be said that in both cases it grows rapidly with indulgence. There is much in getting the peculiar point of view from which Mr. Howells looks out upon the world. It is a delightful chance that has brought us the family history of the Kentons, who will be remembered as figuring in the back ground of 'Their Silver Wedding Journey' —especially the fine-looking, depressed Grand Army man on the steamer, who seemed to desire nothing so much as to get back to his square brick house at Tuskingum. It may be confidently said that no more typically American family has been created in fiction than these Kentons, as they are drawn for us in these later pages. Of course, there is room for discussion as to what the typical American is—whether the New Englander, or the Southerner, or the Westerner, or the new and alien hyphenated elements which our younger writers are celebrating as the real thing. Yet a strong case may be made out for the American of the type represented in fiction most fully by Mr. Howells, and the younger Henry James, on the score that it represents more of those ideals and characteristics which have been regarded as peculiarly American than any other type. The plot of the story is slight, but in the end the reader knows the Kentons more thoroughly and more intimately than almost any real family except his own. Altogether, the novel has the charm of what is typical.

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'The Flight of Pony Baker' will at once commend itself to boys and their elders because it is the work of William Dean Howells. Mr. Howells knows the modern American boy so thoroughly, his ambitions and traits, his temptations and joys, that one is predisposed to like Pony Baker. He lived in a small country town and was petted by his mother much to his disgust, and sternly suppressed by his father; and of course, being a boy, he planned to run away to the Indians, and, later, he made up his mind to join a circus—what boy has not? But through all these phases of his young life our author brings Pony Baker, showing his old-time charm of narration. The days are those before the war; the scene is in a little Ohio river town; and the characters are real boys and real girls. Pony Baker decides upon flight from his home, and the most admirable humor is shown in narrating his various attempts at absconding, not one of which becomes known to his unsuspecting parents until the book's close; and even this attempt is not carried very far.

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