Part 11

“His qualities were pretty well known in the army, where there were parties of all politics, and of plenty of shrewdness and wit; but there existed such a perfect confidence in him, as the first captain in the world, and such a faith and admiration in his prodigious genius and fortune, that the very men whom he notoriously cheated of their pay, the chiefs whom he used and injured (for he used all men, great and small, that came near him, as his instruments alike), and took something of theirs, either some quality or some property--the blood of a soldier it might be, or a jeweled hat, or a hundred thousand crowns from a king, or a portion out of a starving sentinel’s three farthings; or (when he was young) a kiss from a woman and the gold chain off her neck, taking all he could from woman or man, and having, as I said, this of the godlike in him, that he could see a hero perish or a sparrow fall with the same amount of sympathy for either. Not that he had no tears; he could always order up this reserve at the proper moment to battle; he could draw upon tears or smiles alike, and whenever need was for using this cheap coin. He would cringe to a shoe-black, as he would flatter a minister or a monarch; be haughty, be humble, threaten, repent, weep, grasp your hand, or stab you, whenever he saw occasion--but yet those of the army who knew him best, and had suffered most from him, admired him most of all; and as he rode along the lines of battle, or galloped up in the nick of time to a battalion reeling from before the enemy’s charge or shot, the fainting men and officers got new courage as they saw the splendid calm of his face and felt that his will made them irresistible.”

What a description of the destruction of the French army after Ramillies:

“At first it was a retreat orderly enough; but presently the retreat became a rout, and a frightful slaughter of the French ensued on this panic; so that an army of sixty thousand men was utterly crushed and destroyed in the course of a couple of hours. It was as if a hurricane had seized a compact numerous fleet, flung it all to the winds, shattered, sunk, and annihilated it: _Afflavit Deus et dissipati sunt._”

The author is not so successful in the introduction of his literary characters, one of whom, Joseph Addison, not only has no relation to the story, but adds little to the merit of the work.

A peculiarity of Thackeray is the subtle manner in which the motives and passions of his various personages sometimes reveal themselves. For instance, Lady Castlewood’s intense love for Esmond in the early part of the book is altogether a matter of inference from her strange conduct, and might very easily be overlooked or misunderstood by persons who lack insight and keen perception. Indeed, in some places the indications of the motive as drawn from the words and actions of his heroines are so delicate and shadowy, that we can not always quite tell what the author would have us infer, or perhaps we even come to the conclusion that there is no accounting for a woman. And yet, even when we are thus at fault, how entirely natural it all seems!

Thackeray never wanders into unknown territory. He writes about the people he knows and describes the things with which he is in close contact. In the development of the story there is a blending of experience and imagination, which mutually aid each other in the creation of characters that are marvelously ideal and true to nature at the same time.

Dickens’s men and women are frequently types. You can predict with great confidence what each will do under given circumstances. Thackeray’s characters are more uncertain and elusive. But is not this the way of the world? Those of us who have been mistaken in the conduct of our friends or enemies (and who has not?) must acknowledge the essential truthfulness of many a portrait which at first blush appears inconsistent.

And in this novel, in which Colonel Esmond tells his own story, the author shows his surpassing power in making us see his principal characters, especially his dear mistress and her daughter, not so much as they really were, but as they appeared to the man who loved them. Thackeray gives to our understanding very good reason to doubt whether Lady Castlewood had all the perfections he attributes to her, but he compels our hearts to join in Esmond’s worship, and to feel even toward the wayward Beatrix a share of the passion of her lover.

UNCLE TOM’S CABIN HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” is a novel which was written for a purpose. It was an attack upon the system of negro slavery and was intended to awaken the people of the North to a realization of the horrors and essential wickedness of that institution. So well did it accomplish its purpose that it became an important feature of the history of the abolition movement, which led to the organization of the Republican party and finally to the overthrow of slavery. No other American novel had such a circulation nor left so deep an impression upon its time. But it has long outlived its moral purpose, and the persistent demand both for the book and for the play which is taken from it shows that “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” has a vitality of its own, which entitles it to a high rank among works of fiction. What are the elements of its excellence?

It is not in all respects a finished production. The style is uneven and marred by occasional crudities and weaknesses. The author evidently lacks a good deal in the matter of literary education. Words are used unnecessarily which are colloquial, very rare, or perhaps not found in the dictionary at all. Thus: “The rocking chair of the good Quakeress Rachel Halliday kept up a subdued creechy-crawchy”; Rachel collects “needments” for Eliza out of her household stores; St. Clare speaks of the “cheatery” of his negroes, and other phrases are used which are equally obsolete or unconventional. Some of the sentences are awkward in the extreme, and there are involved paragraphs, with inconsistent similes and metaphors.

Besides this, there is a certain femininity pervading the book, which appears in minute descriptions of household duties and utensils, and in a certain religious flavor of the Sunday-school variety, which obtrudes itself in inappropriate places.

But although the mere literary quality of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” is not high, the work is characterized by great dramatic power, and permeated with a feeling so intense that the expression of it rises in many places into eloquence. The great feature of this somber and absorbing novel is its convincing character. The truth of the dreadful facts which it recounts are shown, not merely by contemporary records, but the events are described in such a way as to bring with them the consciousness that they must have occurred. This overpowering impression of reality and the tragic pathos of the tale itself contain the secret of its power.

The main plot of the novel flows on in a very natural manner. Uncle Tom, a faithful, conscientious negro, is the property of a Kentucky master who is compelled by necessity to tear him away from his family and sell him “down the river.” First he becomes the property of St. Clare, an excellent man, upon whose death he is purchased by one Legree, an incarnate fiend, by whom he is whipped to death for refusing to become the instrument of his master’s cruelty. Other incidents, like the escape of Eliza and her husband, who finally obtain their liberty in Canada, are subsidiary to the main design.

Many of the characters are so natural that they must have been taken from living models. The cultured, cynical, yet sensitive and kindly St. Clare, and his querulous wife Marie; Eva, their affectionate, spiritual, fairy-like child; the grotesque Topsy; the prim and precise Miss Ophelia, with strong New England instincts and prejudices; Haley the slave-trader, the “man of humanity,”--seem especially lifelike. Legree’s brutality is almost inconceivable, and its only justification is found in the fact that such men, abnormal as they were, actually existed and controlled the destinies of great numbers of human beings.

Some of the episodes are quite as effective as the main current of the narrative; for example, the stealing of Lucy’s baby by the slave trader on the way down the Ohio, followed by the suicide of the mother. We know that children were sold in just that fashion, and the simple narrative tells us exactly what it meant. There is a terrible power, too, in the whispered story about poor Prue: “She’s got drunk again and they put her down cellar, and they left her all day, and I hearn them saying that the flies had got to her, and she’s dead.” No detailed account of the actual barbarities inflicted upon the wretched creature could give a stronger impression of the hideous reality than the whispers of the other slaves who knew of it and yet were afraid to speak.

To make a fine work of art, the subject ought to be worthy and the treatment artistic. Mrs. Stowe fails a little in the latter point, but there was never a novelist with a more impressive theme. It is that theme, after all, which has given to her work the chief part of its permanent value.

CRANFORD MRS. GASKELL

“Cranford” is a novel of somewhat the same character as “Pride and Prejudice.” There are few pictures more true to life than Mrs. Gaskell’s description of the small town and the little ladies who inhabit it. It was a town from which men were mostly absent, and where it was felt that they would be quite useless even if they were there. The little women were filled with great love for gentility and a distrust of mankind so great that they almost persuaded themselves that to be a man was to be vulgar. They practiced “elegant economies”--for money-spending was “low and ostentatious.” They never admitted their poverty, and were greatly shocked when Captain Brown came to town and openly confessed his own. They were so refined that they had to retire to the privacy of their own rooms to suck an orange, and were filled with dismay when at the house of Mr. Holbrook peas were placed upon the table to be eaten with a two-pronged fork.

We have delicious bits of rambling and inconsequent talk, delicate descriptions of the various strata of respectability in Cranford, and of the autocratic social dominion exercised by one Mrs. Jameson, who, although a great tyrant over her neighbors, lived in abject fear of her own butler. The author portrays graphically the superstitions of the ladies in this little community, their belief in a “murderous gang” which was always upon the point of committing some desperate robbery, their terror of footpads who never appeared, their various opinions upon the subject of ghosts, and the ingenious scheme of rolling a ball under the bed so as to find whether a robber was hidden there, without stooping down to look. The author describes vividly the character of the small economies in which each person is said to have some specialty of his own; while one preserves bits of paper, another saves up all the strings; with a good housekeeper it is butter or cream, while with Miss Mattie Jenkyns, the heroine of the story, if the story can be said to have a heroine, it was in the matter of candles. This Miss Mattie is a lovable character, very self-depreciating and always submissive to her older sister Deborah. Miss Mattie had had a lover in her youth, one Mr. Holbrook, an old-fashioned country farmer who was found lacking in gentility by the rest of the family, therefore her days ebbed away in single blessedness.

Realistic pictures are given of the difficulties of the little ladies with servants and their “followers,” who were always forbidden by the strict rules prevailing in Cranford, but who never could be kept out.

There are episodes filled with very real and tender pathos--the sacrifices made by Miss Jessie Brown for her invalid sister, the sad picture of the suffering of the mother whose boy, after a public flogging by his father, ran off to sea. This same boy, later in life, reappeared in Cranford, ever true to his character as a practical joker, and astonished the ladies by his accounts of the hunting of cherubim among the heights of the Himalayas, a kind of sport which seemed to them little better than sacrilege.

The whole book is a delicious epitome of the narrow life of a small town, and is an ample refutation of the curious dogma, lately announced, that women are deficient in the sense of humor!

BARFÜSSELE BERTHOLD AUERBACH

I hardly know whether Auerbach will always be regarded as one of the great masters of fiction, but to me his simple village stories take a higher rank than many works that are far more pretentious. They are filled with infinite tenderness, and are true to the essential traits of human nature. Auerbach has an intimate knowledge of the village life in the Black Forest, of which he writes, and he is able to combine universal characteristics with local peculiarities in such a way that the picture becomes vivid and convincing.

“Barfüssele” is the story of a little orphan girl, a wise child, clear-headed and reflective, who develops under the solemn training of poverty and sorrow into a character of great sweetness, self reliance, and heroism.

In the opening chapter we see her with her younger brother walking to the house where they have always lived, knocking at the door and calling for their father and mother. The children do not understand the meaning of the funeral they have attended, nor why they have been separated and given to the care of others, and they are looking for their parents to come home again. But there is no answer to their calling, so they go off to the pond and amuse themselves by throwing stones and making them skip across the water. Here Amrei, the girl, pretends to be more awkward than she really is, in order to give Dami, her little brother, the pleasure of showing his greater skill.

Many charming incidents of childhood follow--accounts of the riddles that she gives and guesses, descriptions of her quaint childish philosophy regarding the birds, the dogs, the trees, and the deep problem of human sorrow.

After a while she begins to earn her living by tending a flock of geese, and when the Rodelbauer, her guardian, wants her to give up such work because it is a reproach to her, she answers steadfastly, “I must carry out what I have begun.”

It is a sad life she leads with the Black Marann, a widow, who through long years has been waiting for the return of an only son, from whom she hears nothing. The boy has in fact been killed in Algiers, yet no one in the village dares to tell her, though they tell Amrei, and the child has to bear the burden of this secret. But amid all this gloom, the heart of the orphan girl is strengthened by the precepts of her melancholy companion, who tells her how much better it is to be sufficient to one’s self than to depend upon another for happiness. And when at the wedding at the Rodelbauer’s no one will dance with “Little Barefoot” (for so the girl is called), she dances by herself and dances well, and says “It is better to dance alone, for then I do not need to wait for a partner.”

But the main purpose of her life is to cheer and stimulate her younger brother, a boy who is weak-spirited, complaining and unsteady, whose character is indeed a sharp contrast to her own. Into his mind she tries to instil her own spirit of independence. He finds service in a neighboring village, and she will not weep at parting with him until after he is gone, and then the world seems very empty to her. Dami is unjustly turned away from his situation and loses all his little belongings in a fire. He works for a while with a charcoal-burner, and then resolves to go to America. His sister secretly rejoices at his bold purpose, but reproves him severely when he wants to revenge himself upon the master who has discharged him. It is largely through her efforts that his passage money is raised. She gives him his father’s ax and sack, and tells him that these two things mean that he must work and gather and save the results of his labor, and that they must be the inspiration of his life.

Meanwhile she has been taken into service at the Rodelbauer’s, and her goodness and skill have made her indispensable, though she suffers much from the taunts and scolding of Rosel, the daughter of the household. Her clothing is poor, but always very neat, for, says the author, “Neatness is the ornament of poverty, costing nothing, but not to be purchased.”

On one occasion Amrei is unexpectedly asked to accompany her master’s family to a wedding party in a neighboring village, and while there, when she overhears Rosel’s remark, “It is only our serving maid,” she says to herself, “Don’t let a word spoil all your pleasure. If you begin that you will walk everywhere upon thorns.”

An unknown youth, who comes riding a gray horse, dances with her. There is a lively description of the festival, of her enthusiasm and the joy of that dance, and of her thoughts in her little room in the still night when she returns.

The scene now changes to the house of the Landfriedbauer, a wealthy peasant, whose son Johannes is sent out to seek a wife. His mother follows the boy down the road and has a long confidential talk with him, which is charming for its _naïvete_ and shrewdness. Her description of the signs by which a good wife may be told is quite elaborate. Johannes must notice how she behaves towards her servants, how she blows out the light; he must observe her if he can in anger, “when the hidden inner man leaps out”; he must notice how she laughs, whether her flowers thrive, whether she is willing to sing a second part or always wants to set the key. “A girl should never go with empty hands, and she must leap three hedges to pick up a feather.” But in her doings she must be quiet and constant, not filled with mad eagerness, “as if she would tear down a piece of the world.” He must notice whether she unties a knot or cuts it, whether she keeps her copybooks and early treasures, whether she wears her shoes inside or outside, and whether she cares for the poor. Thus furnished with much useful information, Johannes rides forth on his gray horse to seek his wife.

Now the father of Johannes has written to the Krappenzacher in Amrei’s village, to take his son to the best houses there, and the Krappenzacher, by agreement with the Rodelbauer, is to have a hundred kronenthalers if Johannes marries Rosel. The young man is ostensibly looking for another gray horse, so a horse of that color is put into the Rodelbauer’s stable and the young man is brought thither to examine him. On this occasion Rosel is to come out and milk the cows as proof of her housewifery, but as she knows nothing about milking, the experiment is made with a full pail and with a cow already milked. While the men are discussing their horse trade, Rosel’s voice is heard in song near by, and “Little Barefoot” sings the second part. Johannes asks who they are, and the Rodelbauer tells him that Amrei is an adopted child of whom his father was once the guardian, for he knows that this will sound better than to say she is a servant.

In the meantime Amrei has discovered that the visitor is the same as he who has danced with her at the wedding, and whose mother it was that gave her a necklace when she was a child; and Johannes on his part finds in Little Barefoot the qualities of which his mother has spoken. In a sudden outbreak of rage and jealousy Rosel strikes Amrei to the ground. Just at that moment Johannes appears, and naturally it is not Rosel but Little Barefoot whom he chooses for his wife.

The lovers’ talk, their riddles and their songs as they ride off together on the gray horse, are set forth in a narrative of singular beauty, and when she reaches his home it is the girl and not Johannes who has to break the news to the Landfriedbauer and his wife and seek their blessing, while the young man stays at the miller’s in much anxiety as to the outcome of her mission. Her plea is really eloquent in its simple pathos. She is accepted, and the Landfriedbauer and his wife, being anxious to avoid the reproach of having let the boy marry a penniless girl, each gives her in secret a store of coins which has been laid by, and when both stores are spread upon the table at a family reunion, each parent really begins to believe what they both say, that their new daughter-in-law has come to them with a dowry of her own.

This modern “Cinderella” is written in a style of great simplicity, and in my view, the village heroine, the counterpart of whom no doubt exists in many similar communities, is entitled to a high place in literature.

EKKEHARD JOSEPH VON SCHEFFEL

“Ekkehard” is a novel derived very largely from mediæval records that are now little remembered. It attempts to reproduce for the modern reader the political and social conditions of the tenth century, and the story is accompanied with numerous notes and references, giving evidence of the careful researches of the author. It is to German scholarship, indeed, that one would naturally look for a work of this description, for although many novelists elsewhere use historical materials for certain parts of their works, there are few who would follow the records with such fidelity.

The scene opens at a castle on a lofty eminence near the lake of Constance. Hadwig, the young and not inconsolable widow of the old duke, resolves for diversion to go with her train to the monastery of St. Gallus on the other side of the lake. This visit, illustrating many of the details of monastic life, is graphically and attractively described. According to the rules of the order, no woman’s foot may pass over the threshold of the cloister, but as the duchess is the protectress of the convent, it is determined that she may be carried over, and the duty falls upon the young monk Ekkehard, whose flattering words win him such favor that he is commanded to go to her castle of Hohentwiel to instruct her in Latin and read Virgil to her. The development of a very natural romance follows. Ekkehard is as innocent as a child, and for a long time his mistress vainly tries to awaken in him the passion that rises in her own heart. When a horde of barbarous Huns attacks her possessions, and the monks of Reichenau and St. Gallus betake themselves to the castle for defense, she gives him the sword of her late husband and bids him distinguish himself in the combat. The Huns are defeated, but Ekkehard has not signalized himself by any remarkable exploit. In a contest of story-telling, too, he fails to meet the expectations of his mistress, and when at last his own passion is fully aroused, it is too late. He seizes an inopportune moment to declare it. He is detected in the chapel in most unmonastic behavior, and Hadwig is inexorable. He is imprisoned, he escapes and flees to the regions of the higher Alps, where he dwells in a cave, and for his own consolation composes the “Waltharïlied,” a short epic, full of much slaughter, in which heads and hands and feet are hacked off, eyes put out, and other unappetizing feats of arms performed amid the lusty merriment even of those who suffer from these mutilations. This work is an actual reproduction of a poem of the time, but many will consider it a blemish in a romance with which it has little connection.