Part 8

“It was well for Lucia that she was not the only one to whom Donna Prassede had to do good.... Besides the rest of the family, all of whom were persons more or less needing amendment and guidance--besides all the other occasions which offered themselves to her, or she contrived to find, of extending the same kind offices, of her own free will, to many to whom she was under no obligations; she had also five daughters, none of whom were at home, but who gave her much more to think about than if they had been. Three of these were nuns, two were married; hence Donna Prassede naturally found herself with three monasteries, and two houses to superintend; a vast and complicated undertaking, and the more arduous, because two husbands, backed by fathers, mothers, and brothers; three abbesses, supported by other dignitaries, and by many nuns, would not accept her superintendence. It was a complete warfare, _alias_ five warfares, concealed, and even courteous, up to a certain point, but ever active, ever vigilant. There was in every one of these places a continued watchfulness to avoid her solicitude, to close the door against her counsels, to elude her inquiries, and to keep her in the dark, as far as possible, on every undertaking. We do not mention the resistance, the difficulties she encountered in the management of other still more extraneous affairs; it is well known that one must generally do good to men by force.”

The story, like some other of the greatest works of fiction--like Don Quixote, Les Misérables, nay, like Henry Esmond itself, is somewhat too prolix. The long historical citations, the extracts from the edicts and proclamations of the time, look as if the author considered it necessary to prove his story rather than to let it prove itself. That Renzo and Lucia should leave Father Cristoforo to die alone is, to my mind, the most serious blemish in the book; but in spite of these shortcomings, “The Betrothed” is entitled to one of the first places in the front rank of the masterpieces of fiction.

EUGENIE GRANDET HONORÉ DE BALZAC

It is not quite fair to Balzac to judge him by any one of the stories in his encyclopædic “Comedie Humaine.” The countless varieties of life and character which he portrays show the author’s versatility and power, and have perhaps a value from their very number which can not be adequately treated when we consider only a single specimen of his work. Many of his characters, it is true, are grotesques; some are absolute deformities; others are hard to understand by any but a Frenchman,--French human nature, as it seems to me, being a little different from human nature elsewhere; but there is one great work of his which, although it is not without its morbid side, must appeal to the common consciousness of all mankind, and bring to every human heart the conviction of its spiritual truth. “Eugenie Grandet” is a novel of this universal kind of excellence.

The plot is a very simple one. M. Grandet is a miser who lives in an old comfortless house in Saumur with his wife, his daughter Eugenie, and big Nanon, the maid of all work. The Cruchots and the De Grassins are intriguing for the hand of the heiress, and on Eugenie’s birthday, when all these are assembled, a stranger unexpectedly appears, Charles Grandet, her cousin, committed to the care of his uncle by his father in Paris, who has become a bankrupt and has determined upon suicide. Charles, however, knows nothing of this, and is overcome with pitiful grief when he learns of his father’s death. Eugenie, a simple minded girl, falls in love with him, but the old miser, anxious to get rid of him, sends him to the Indies. Grandet’s tyranny over his wife and child is graphically portrayed. The poor wife succumbs to it and dies. It is not long till the miser follows her, and Eugenie is left alone with a colossal fortune for which she cares nothing, and with a lover from whom she has received no word. In the meantime Charles has acquired a fortune of his own, and on his return writes to her that he wishes to marry another. Her dream is over, the light of her life is extinguished; she gives her hand without her heart to Cruchot, and upon his death continues her hopeless life alone in the desolate home, administering her estate with economy, but devoting its proceeds to works of beneficence.

This is a story, the like of which has happened many a time in actual life, but the cold skeleton of the tale as given above conveys not the slightest idea of the warm flesh and blood with which it is invested. The description of the old street and the dreary house and its furniture is a literary jewel. The account of the way in which Grandet accumulates his fortune, and of the neighborhood rumors regarding his wealth, stirs our own acquisitiveness as we read it, and shows him to be a very natural and almost inevitable sort of miser. He is moreover a man of commanding ability, who extorts respect even though he inspires abhorrence. The details of his habits, his economies, and his schemes, as well as his personal appearance, are admirably given. Equally lifelike are the descriptions of big Nanon, the devoted house-servant, starved and overtasked, yet always grateful to the master who took her when none others would; of the wife, submissive, sensitive, magnanimous, and uncomplaining; and of Eugenie, a girl who has grown up in perfect innocence of the world, pure, beautiful, and of a generous and noble spirit. All these are the subjects of an odious domestic tyranny on the part of “Goodman Grandet,” the particulars of which are set forth with powerful fidelity.

Charles is a rather uninteresting young dandy, who comes arrayed for conquest. It is not unnatural that an artless girl like Eugenie should fall in love with him, and her devices to procure him such luxuries as a cake, a wax candle, and sugar for his coffee, add to the charm of their simple love-making. The sympathy of the two women in his sorrow contrasts sharply with the sordid calculations of the miser, and the scene where Eugenie learns his needs by furtively reading two of his letters (for even her good qualities are decidedly of the French type) and then brings him her little store of gold, and when he hesitates, begs him on her knees to take it--this scene is very effective, as is also her despairing cry, after he departs, “O mother, mother, if I had God’s power for one moment!”

But the more tragic parts of this simple drama are near its close,--the stormy scene when Grandet learns that Eugenie has given Charles her money, her imprisonment in a room of the old house, her mother’s illness and patient death, and, ghastliest of all, the last hours of the miser:

“So long as he could open his eyes, where the last sparks of life seemed to linger, they used to turn at once to the door of the room where all his treasures lay, and he would say to his daughter, in tones that seemed to thrill with a panic of fear:

“‘Are they there still?’

“‘Yes, father.’

“‘Keep watch over the gold!... Let me see the gold.’

“Then Eugenie used to spread out the louis on a table before him, and he would sit for whole hours with his eyes fixed on the louis in an unseeing stare, like that of a child who begins to see for the first time; and sometimes a weak infantine smile, painful to see, would steal across his features.

“‘That warms me!’ he muttered more than once, and his face expressed a perfect content.

“When the curé came to administer the sacrament, all the life seemed to have died out of the miser’s eyes, but they lit up for the first time for many hours at the sight of the silver crucifix, the candlesticks, and holy water vessel, all of silver; he fixed his gaze on the precious metal, and the wen on his face twitched for the last time.

“As the priest held the gilded crucifix above him that the image of Christ might be laid to his lips, he made a frightful effort to clutch it--a last effort which cost him his life. He called Eugenie, who saw nothing; she was kneeling beside him, bathing in tears the hand that was growing cold already. ‘Give me your blessing, father,’ she entreated. ‘Be very careful!’ the last words came from him; ‘one day you will render an account to me of everything here below.’ Which utterance clearly shows that a miser should adopt Christianity as his religion.”

Then follows the long waiting of Eugenie; the dastardly letter sent by Charles after his return; the noble dignity with which she releases him and pays his father’s creditors to preserve the honor of one who is quite careless of it himself, and then resigns herself to her hopeless destiny.

“Eugenie Grandet” is a consummate work of art.

DEAD SOULS NIKOLAI GOGOL

“Dead Souls,” the masterpiece of Gogol, is not very widely known among English readers, but it is entitled to a high rank in literature. Perhaps the fact that it is a torso has been one cause of this neglect, for before the second volume was finished the author was overtaken by that madness which clouded his last days. But the first volume is practically complete in itself. It records the efforts of the smug, shrewd, rascally Tchitschikoff to procure from various landowners certain paper transfers of the serfs who had died on their estates since the last enumeration in order to effect a fraudulent loan by means of a list corresponding with the official register. The description of the stranger, of his sudden arrival in a provincial city, of the various estates he visits and the remarkable people he encounters, and then, while his enterprise is prospering, of the sudden spreading of the scandal through the town and his forced flight to other regions--these things are told with a power of portraiture which is amazing. The characters he describes are sometimes grotesque, but they are faithful to the essentials of human nature; even the wild Nozdreff and the massive Sobakevitch are very real. Gogol has been called the Dickens of Russian literature, and his portraits, while fewer in number and variety, are less like puppets than many of those drawn by the English novelist. His description of Pliushkin the miser is quite as striking as that of L’Avare of Molière or Père Grandet of Balzac, while his account of the way the gossip regarding Tchitschikoff started and circulated is as fine as anything in “The School for Scandal.” He calls his book a “poem,” and although it is quite devoid of versification or lofty diction, yet if the word “poem” means a “work of original creative art,” “Dead Souls” will fully justify the name.

It has the same sort of masterly quality as “Don Quixote,” and transports us as completely to the scenes which it describes. His patriotic apostrophe to Russia in the final chapter, and his description of the swift flight of the hero in his troika, are picturesque and eloquent to the last degree.

THE THREE GUARDSMEN ALEXANDRE DUMAS

Probably there is no better example of the novel of adventure than “The Three Guardsmen,” by Alexandre Dumas. The author claims in his preface a historical origin for his novel. However that may be, the plot seems plausible in spite of its extravagances, and never was there a book in which men conspired and slaughtered each other more merrily, nor in which the mere strenuous life without moral accessories has found a more perfect embodiment.

The book in its way is a masterpiece. The style is simple and luminous to such a degree as would hardly be possible in any other language than that in which it was written. No work in the world is more easy to read, to understand, or to translate. The old French dictum that no words should be used in literature which can not be understood upon the market-place here attains its highest realization.

As for the characters, they are of the simplest type. The dashing devil-may-care soldier and adventurer, the deep drinker, the heavy player, the man who with equal gayety defies the bullets of the enemy and the commonest precepts of morality, has here his apotheosis. Perhaps the hero of the book even more than D’Artagnan himself is Athos, the chief of the three musketeers, who, having made an unfortunate marriage in his youth, has forsaken his name and station and embarked upon a life of mere adventure. We love him and admire him, and yet it is hard to tell why upon any logical or ethical principles we should do either. Yet when he gets very drunk, or when he hangs his wife because he finds that she bears upon her shoulder the mark of a criminal conviction, we feel that he has done in each case exactly the right thing. Generally a novelist seeks by contrasting his hero with more commonplace characters to set him off in relief, but in this novel almost everybody is a hero, and all are equally and superlatively great and admirable, except perhaps the poor woman who has been hanged and comes to life again and engages in divers diabolical plots against the rest of the world.

JANE EYRE CHARLOTTE BRONTE

“Jane Eyre” is a book which impresses the reader with its power,--I might say its masculine power, were it not for the fact that the author gives us at every turn the woman’s point of view.

The narrative, like that of “David Copperfield,” is in the form of an autobiography, and the plot, which is quite simple, has only that sort of unity which the heroine gives it. Yet the work glows with intense passion and the characters are so faithful to nature that they convince us that vivid personal experience must have come to the aid of the author’s imagination in delineating them.

Jane Eyre, an orphan, is abused and mistreated in childhood, first in the family of Mrs. Reed, where she is brought up, and afterwards at the Lowood charity school, where she is first a pupil and then becomes a teacher. She seeks a situation as governess, and finds employment at Thornfield Hall, the residence of a Mr. Rochester, who, after a wild, dissipated, wandering life, has come, some time before, into possession of this splendid property. Here she has the charge of Adele, his ward.

There is a certain uncanny secret about Thornfield which the governess finds herself unable to fathom. She hears wild laughter and inarticulate sounds in a distant part of the Hall. One night Rochester’s bed is mysteriously set on fire, and Jane Eyre saves his life. On another occasion, while the house is full of guests, a horrible shriek comes from the upper floor and a murder is well nigh committed by some unknown creature who is hidden there.

In the meantime Mr. Rochester has become greatly interested in his little governess, who, although quiet and plain in appearance, is warm-hearted and high-spirited, with a strong sense of duty, great courage, and an indomitable will. And she on her side becomes fascinated and at last utterly devoted to her master, a man of brilliant parts, strong, brusque, proud and autocratic. He offers her his hand, and she accepts him, to learn, however, in the very presence of the altar and during the wedding ceremony, that he has another wife! It seems that in his early years he had been beguiled into a marriage in the West Indies with a woman whose dissolute courses had wrecked his life, and had terminated in her own madness, and that this was the maniac who had occasioned the strange scenes at the Hall.

Jane Eyre now flees from Thornfield, concealing all traces of her whereabouts. She wanders amid incredible hardships and destitution, and at last finds shelter at Moor House, the home of St. John Rivers and his two sisters, who are afterwards discovered to be her relatives, and with whom she divides a legacy which she receives from a deceased uncle. St. John is a country clergyman of high character, full of zeal, ambition, and fanaticism, and determined to devote his life to missionary service in India. He seeks her hand, but she realizes that it is not from love but to make her his fellow laborer in the work of the Gospel. He has sought to inspire her with his own enthusiasm, and she is on the point of yielding, when she seems to hear the voice of Rochester calling to her in pain and anguish. She returns to Thornfield, and finds that the Hall has been consumed in a conflagration kindled by the maniac, and that Rochester, who had sought in vain to save the life of the wretched creature, has been himself rescued, blind and a cripple, from the ruins. She seeks him and becomes his wife.

But the bare recital of these leading events gives very little idea of the characters in this somber and tragic tale, or the feelings which control their actions. The book must be read through to be understood. From the very beginning the author strikes a resounding chord in human nature. Brutality to children stirs us to fury, and no one, not even Dickens or Victor Hugo, has painted this form of tyranny in livelier colors than Charlotte Brontë. The conduct of Mrs. Reed and of Rev. Mr. Brocklehurst, the sanctified and inhuman director of Lowood school, arouses our hot resentment.

Of course there are blemishes in the book. Sometimes the conversation is too carefully written to be natural. Then there is an intrinsic improbability in the plot. Why should a young woman so self-sufficient as the heroine consent to marry Rochester before she had solved the secret of Thornfield? But these defects in the novel are trifling by the side of its abounding excellences. At nearly every point the heroine awakens our admiration; we feel (sometimes, perhaps, in spite of our better judgment) that she is doing right; and so masterly is the author’s portraiture that, in spite of many repulsive features, she awakens a stronger sympathy for the seared and blighted Rochester than for the pure and devoted yet inexorable St. John Rivers. Jane Eyre is an eloquent novel. It is emphatically a work of genius.

CARMEN PROSPER MERIMÉE

It has always seemed to me that “Carmen” was a story of great power and told with wonderful skill. I know not whether it be fact, nor whether the author has learned it in the way he says; but so convincing is the narrative, it seems to me impossible that it is a mere product of the imagination. Yet the leading characters are so abnormal that I sometimes wonder why I believe this story so thoroughly. It must be because it is true.

The author, in pursuing certain archæological researches to discover the site of the ancient battle of Munda, comes with his guide upon a secluded amphitheatre among the rocks, where he suddenly encounters an outlaw, José Navarro, whom he makes his friend by the exchange of some simple courtesies and by warning him at the humble venta where they lodge together, of the approach of the officers of justice.

Some days afterwards, while the author was leaning upon the parapet of the quay at Cordova, Carmen, a young gipsy girl of a strange and savage beauty, comes and sits near him. After some conversation he accompanies her to her residence to have his fortune told. Suddenly the door opens, and Navarro, in a very bad humor, enters the room. A quarrel ensues between him and Carmen in the gipsy language, and it appears from the gestures that the young girl is urging the bandit to cut the stranger’s throat. He refuses, takes the author by the arm, leads him into the street, and directs him home.

Some time afterwards the narrator, in passing through Cordova, learns that Navarro has been condemned to death, and upon a visit to the prison the day before his execution, the bandit tells him the strange story of his liaison with this wild and cruel, yet fascinating girl.

At the great cigar factory at Seville she has a bloody altercation with one of her fellow operatives. Navarro, a rough, green soldier stationed in that city, is ordered to conduct her to prison. She talks to him in his own Basque tongue, pretending to be his fellow countryman, and pleads with him to release her. Inflamed with a sudden passion, he suffers her to escape, and is himself degraded and imprisoned. She secretly sends to him in his cell the means of securing his freedom, and after his release she gives him the liveliest proofs of her gratitude and affection. But she is capricious and fickle to the last degree. Urged by jealousy, Navarro kills an officer and is compelled to desert the army, and at her instigation he takes up the life, first of a smuggler, and then of a bandit. She is the controlling spirit of a little band of outlaws, whose diabolical crimes are described in a manner so natural that they cease to appear extraordinary. Navarro slays the husband of Carmen, a one-eyed miscreant, and takes his place as her lawful lord. But she soon falls in love with a _picador_, and although this passion is as ephemeral as the rest, Navarro is seized with fury. He strives to persuade her to go with him to some distant region where they can begin life anew. He will forgive the past; he asks only her companionship and love. But she spurns him; he may kill her if he likes, but she will not live with him. She scorns even to flee or to defend herself. At his command she rides with him to a lonely place, where he stabs her, while her eyes flash defiance. He buries her in the wood and delivers himself to justice.

In spite of her crimes and infidelities, there is a touch of heroism and magnanimity in this wild creature which commands our admiration, and explains the passion she awakens in the heart of Navarro.

“Carmen” is a short story, meagre both in incidents and characters, but its few touches are those of the master. It is a work of consummate art.

DAVID COPPERFIELD CHARLES DICKENS

“David Copperfield” and “Henry Esmond” are perhaps the best illustrations extant of the advantages of the autobiographical method in fiction, which, whatever may be its drawbacks, is better fitted than any other to subjective description. It is said that the true function of the painter is to reproduce things on the canvas, not as they are, but as they appear to the person observing them. In like manner it is often the function of the novelist’s art to describe the world, not as it is, but as it appears to some particular person; and there is no better way to do this than by an autobiography. The artistic truth of the picture will appear, when the reader says to himself, “How often that thing looked just so to me!” Of course the estimate of the truth of this sort of a picture will vary with the personal temperament of the reader, but I think most young readers will find an instant bond of sympathy between David Copperfield and themselves.

At the time I first read it, as a college student, I think no work of fiction had ever attracted me so greatly. There seemed to be much in it which corresponded with my own feelings and experiences, and I still think that those parts of the book that deal with childhood, youth, and early manhood are very true to nature. David’s description of the home at Blunderstone where he was born, of the church, of the fowls in the yard and the fears that they occasioned, of his joy in the house that was made out of a boat on the sand, of his resentment at the tyranny of his stepfather, of his school-boy fancies, of his hero-worship of the brilliant Steerforth,--in short, his general way of looking at the world is so exactly like that of the ordinary healthy boy under similar circumstances that these parts of the book are, in the highest and best sense of the word, very realistic.