On Howells Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2020 with funding from Duke University Libraries https://archive.org/details/onhowells01unse On Howells The Best from American Literature Edited by Edwin H. Cady and Louis J. Budd Duke University Press Durham and London 1993 © 1993 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper oo Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book. Contents 81S 058 iq93 Series Introduction vii The Literary Background of Howells’s Social Criticism (1942) George Arms i A Note on Howells and “The Smiling Aspects of Life” (1945) Edwin H. Cady Materials and Form in Howells’s First Novels (1947) William M. Gibson 2/ The Equalitarian Principle in the Fiction of William Dean Howells (1952) William F. Ekstrom 30 Howells, the Atlantic Monthly, and Republicanism (1952) Louis J. Budd 41 William Dean Howells, Ed Howe, and The Story of a Country Town (1958) James B. Stronks 59 The Ethical Unity of The Rise of Silas Lapham (i960) Donald Pizer 65 Point of View in Howells’s The Landlord at Lion's Head (1962) William McMurray 7/ Marcia Gaylord’s Electra Complex: A Footnote to Sex in Howells (1962) Kermit Vanderbilt 79 The Function of Setting in Howells’s The Landlord at Lions Head (1963) Mary C. Sullivan 8g The Architecture of The Rise of Silas Lapham (1966) G. Thomas Tanselle 104 Howells and Ade (1966) Jack Brenner 732 The Dark Side of Their Wedding fourney (1969) Marion W. Cumpiano 142 VI Contents William Dean Howells, George William Curtis, and the “Haymarket Affair” (1969) Clara and Rudolf Kirk 757 Savagery and Civilization: The Moral Dimensions of Howells’s A Boy’s Town (1969) Tom H. Towers i6g Transformations: The Blithedale Romance to Howells and James (1976) Robert Emmet Long iSo The Wilderness Within: Howells’s A Boy’s Town (1976) Thomas Cooley 200 Invalids and Actresses: Howells’s Duplex Imagery for American Women (1976) Sidney H. Bremer 216 William Dean Howells and Charles W. Chestnut: Criticism and Race Fiction in the Age of Booker T. Washington (1976) William L. Andrews 232 Howells’s Oresteia: The Union of Theme and Structure in The Shadow of a Dream (1977) Barbara L. Parker 2^5 An Interoceanic Episode: The Lady of the Aroostoo\ (1977) John W. Crowley 2^8 Index 270 Series Introduction From Vol. i, no. i, in March 1929 to the latest issue, the front cover of American Literature has proclaimed that it is published “with the Cooperation of the American Literature Section [earlier Group] of the Modern Language Association.” Though not easy to explain simply, the facts behind that statement have deeply influenced the conduct and contents of the journal for five decades and more. The journal has never been the “official” or “authorized” organ of any professional organization. Neither, however, has it been an indepen¬ dent expression of the tastes or ideas of Jay B. Hubbell, Clarence Gohdes, or Arlin Turner, for example. Historically, it was first in its field, designedly so. But its character has been unique, too. Part of the tradition of the journal says that Hubbell in founding it intended a journal that should “hold the mirror up to the profes¬ sion”—reflecting steadily its current interests and (ideally) at least sampling the best work being done by historians, critics, and bibliog¬ raphers of American literature during any given year. Such remains the intent of the editors based at Duke University; such also through the decades has been the intent of the Board of Editors elected by the vote of members of the professional association—“Group” or “Sec¬ tion.” The operative point lies in the provisions of the constitutional “Agreements” between the now “Section” and the journal. One of these provides that the journal shall publish no article not approved by two readers from the elected Board. Another provides that the Chairman of the Board or, if one has been appointed and is acting in the editorial capacity at Duke, the Managing Editor need publish no article not judged worthy of the journal. Historically, again, the members of the successive Boards and the Duke editor have seen eye-to-eye. The Board has tended to approve fewer than one out of every submissions. The tradition of the journal dictates that it keep a slim back-log. With however much revision, therefore, the journal publishes practically everything the Board approves. Founder Hubbell set an example from the start by achieving the Vlll Series Introduction almost total participation of the profession in the first five numbers of American Literature. Cairns, Murdock, Pattee, and Rusk were involved in Vol. i, no. i, along with Boynton, Killis Campbell, Foerster, George Philip Krapp, Leisy, Mabbott, Parrington, Bliss Perry, Louise Pound, Quinn, Spiller, Frederick Jackson Turner, and Stanley Williams on the editorial side. Spiller, Tremaine McDowell, Gohdes, and George B. Stewart contributed essays. Canby, George McLean Harper, Gregory Paine, and Howard Mumford Jones ap¬ peared as reviewers. Harry Hayden Clark and Allan Gilbert entered in Vol. I, no. 2. Frederic 1 . Carpenter, Napier Wilt, Merle Curti, and Grant C. Knight in Vol. i, no. 3; Clarence Faust, Granville Hicks, and Robert Morss Lovett in Vol. i, no. 4; Walter Fuller Tay¬ lor, Orians, and Paul Shorey in Vol. 2, no. i. Who, among the founders of the profession, was missing? On the other hand, if the reader belongs to the profession and does not know those present, she or he probably does not know enough. With very few notable exceptions, the movers and shakers of the profession have since the beginning joined in cooperating to create and sustain the journal. The foregoing facts lend a special distinction to the best articles in American Literature. They represent the many, often tumultuous winds of doctrine which have blown from the beginnings through the years of the decade next to last in this century. Those articles often became the firm footings upon which present structures of un¬ derstanding rest. Looking backward, one finds that the argonauts were doughty. Though we know a great deal more than they, they are a great deal of what we know. Typically, the old best authors wrote well—better than most of us. Conceptually, even ideologi¬ cally, we still wrestle with ideas they created. And every now and again one finds of course that certain of the latest work has rein¬ vented the wheel one time more. Every now and again one finds a sunburst idea which present scholarship has forgotten. Then it ap¬ pears that we have receded into mist or darkness by comparison. Historical change, not always for the better, also shows itself in methods (and their implied theories) of how to present evidence, structure an argument, craft a scholarly article. The old masters were far from agreed—much to the contrary—about these matters. Scries Introduction IX But they are worth knowing in their own variety as well as in their instructive differences from us. On the other hand, the majority of American Literature's authors of the best remain among us, working, teaching, writing. One testi¬ mony to the quality of their masterliness is the frequency with which the journal gets requests from the makers of textbooks or collections of commentary to reprint from its pages. Now the opportunity pre¬ sents itself to select without concern for permissions fees what seems the best about a number of authors and topics from the whole sweep of American Literature. The fundamental reason for this series, in other words, lies in the intrinsic, enduring value of articles that have appeared in American Literature since 1929. The compilers, with humility, have accepted the challenge of choosing the best from well over a thousand articles and notes. By “best” is meant original yet sound, interesting, and useful for the study and teaching of an author, intellectual move¬ ment, motif, or genre. The articles chosen for each volume of this series are given simply in the order of their first publication, thus speaking for themselves and entirely making their own points rather than serving the com¬ pilers’ view of literary or philosophical or historical patterns. Hap¬ pily, a chronological order has the virtues of displaying both the de¬ velopment of insight into a particular author, text, or motif and the shifts of scholarly and critical emphasis since 1929. But comparisons or trend-watching or a genetic approach should not blur the individ¬ ual excellence of the articles reprinted. Each has opened a fresh line of inquiry, established a major perspective on a familiar problem, or settled a question that had bedeviled the experts. The compilers aim neither to demonstrate nor undermine any orthodoxy, still less to justify a preference for research over explication, for instance. In the original and still current subtitle, American Literature honors literary history and criticism equally—along with bibliography. To the compilers this series does demonstrate that any worthwhile au¬ thor or text or problem can generate a variety of challenging perspec¬ tives. Collectively, the articles in its volumes have helped to raise contemporary standards of scholarship and criticism. This series is planned to serve as a live resource, not as a homage X Series Introduction to once vibrant but petrifying achievements in the past. For several sound reasons, its volumes prove to be weighted toward the more re¬ cent articles, but none of those reasons includes a presumed superior¬ ity of insight or of guiding doctrine among the most recent genera¬ tions. Some of the older articles could benefit now from a minor revision, but the compilers have decided to reprint all of them ex¬ actly as they first appeared. In their time they met fully the stan¬ dards of first-class research and judgment. Today’s scholar and critic, their fortunate heir, should hope that rising generations will esteem his or her work so highly. Many of the articles published in American Literature have ac¬ tually come (and continue to come) from younger, even new mem¬ bers of the profession. Because many of those authors climb on to prominence in the field, the fact is worth emphasizing. Brief notes on the contributors in the volumes of their series may help readers to discover other biographical or cultural patterns. Edwin H. Cady Louis J. Budd The Literary Background of Howells’s Social Criticism George Arms T hat between the years 1889 and 1894—from Annie Kil- burn to A Traveler from Altruria —the major novels of Wil¬ liam Dean Howells were markedly economic and even socialistic in their criticism of American life is an interpretation commonly conceded by literary historians. Until 1930 those historians who inquired into the factors responsible for the marked change in Howells that occurred during the period of his “economic novels” were content to give Tolstoy sole credit as an influence, basing their view upon Howells’s own words: “What I feel sure is that I can never look at life in the mean and sordid way that I did before I read Tolstoy.”^ The first study to deal with the factors which were responsible for the “economic novels” of Howells was made by Professor Taylor, who without discrediting the influence of Tolstoy has added some four other influences: the Haymarket trial, other industrial disputes, Henry George, and Edward Bellamy." Pro¬ fessor Taylor’s essay is remarkably fine, but on its own admission does not attempt a systematic study of influences on Howells. In 1938 an article by Mr. Getzels® suggested that a Marxist origin could alone account for the “economic novels”; and while it did not locate any single factor, it questioned several of the influences advanced by Professor Taylor. Mr. Wright'* first brought to public notice Laurence Gronlund as the Marxist factor which Mr. Getzels had not discovered, but (through an analysis of the novels) had indi¬ cated must somewhere exist. A note following upon the articles of Messrs. Getzels and Wright presented additional evidence for the importance of Gronlund in influencing the social views of How- ' My Literary Passions (New York, 1895), p. 257. ® W. F. Taylor, “On the Origin of Howells’s Interest in Economic Reform,” American Literature, II, 3-14 (March, 1930). ° J. W. Getzels, “William Dean Howells and Socialism,” Science and Society, II, 376- 386 (Summer, 1938). * Conrad Wright, “The Sources of Mr. Howells’s Socialism,” Science and Society, II, 514-517 (Fall, 1938). 2 George Arms ells, and also indicated more exactly the extent to which Howells presented a Marxian philosophy in his “economic novels.”® A recently discovered interview reafl&rms the evidence of How- ells’s debt to Gronlund cited in the Science and Society articles— the “Editor’s Study” of April, 1888, and a manuscript letter of November 23, 1888. At the same time it corrects the impression that it was through reading alone that Howells came to know his foremost mentor in socialism: “It was ten years ago,” said Mr. Howells the other day, “that I first became interested in the creed of Socialism. I was in Buffalo when Laurence Gronlund lectured there before the Fortnightly Club. Through this address I was led to read his book, ‘The Co-operative Common¬ wealth,’ and Kirkup’s article in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Afterward I read the ‘Fabian Essays’; I was greatly influenced also by a number of William Morris’s tracts. The greatest influence, however, came to me through reading Tolstoi. Both as an artist and as a moraUst I must acknowledge my deep indebtedness to him.”® Howells’s story of his first contact with Gronlund has a very important implication in that he did not merely read him as an independent author of a book but heard him as a leading member of the Socialist Labor party, a fact which suggests a much greater awareness by Howells of real socialistic activity than has usually been granted. In describing his other reading of the time—Kirkup, the Fabian tracts, and Morris—Howells also has indicated a more thorough study of socialistic doctrine than has been generally real¬ ized. At the same time one should observe that he still did not go direcdy to Marx, although Das Kapital was available, but was content to have Marxianism in its modified Gronlundian inter¬ pretation.^ ® George Arms, “Further Inquiry into Howells’s Socialism,” Science and Society, III, 245-248 (Spring, 1939). ° G., “Mr. Howells’s Socialism,” American Fabian, IV, 2 (Feb., 1898). 'The Socialist Labor party held its convention in Buffalo beginning September 17, 1887. Greeted with a mixmre of derision and fear by the Buffalo Express, its activities were publicized daily in that paper, and a speech in English on September 20 by Gronlund (who was on the Platform Committee) was noted though not reported. The Fortnightly Club met on the first and third Thursdays; it is thus possible that Gronlund arrived early and spoke on September 15 (or on September 22, if the meetings were held irregularly in September). Howells’s winter residence in Buffalo was from November 15 to February 3. He may have been in town during the convention, since he was in near-by Dansville. His nieces were reported in town on October 16; Howells was reported in town on October 21. I have examined a file of the Express, but have failed to find anything beyond the above to indicate the time or nature of Gronlund’s speech. ^ Cf. Arms, op. cit., p. 248. Howells’s Social Realism 3 Even in view of Howells’s testimony,® not too much weight should be given to Morris and the Fabians as factors in the develop¬ ment of Howells’s doctrine. His writings indicate no important influence from them that does not have its more convincing parallel in Gronlund.® In what one might term their spiritual influence, they are certainly to be acknowledged. Though not so important as Tolstoy, along with such men as E. E. Hale, T. W. Higginson, and R. T. Ely they nevertheless form that general background of what Howells later called “a real renascence”^” (the industrial con¬ sciousness of the i88o’s and 1890’s). In the same category, though in positions of importance somewhere between Tolstoy and these others, Henry George and Edward Bellamy^^ are also to be placed, with the doctrines of both of whom Howells found some fault.^^ Indeed, although here and there influence from persons other than Gronlund occurs, the almost exclusive basis of Howells’s social philosophy in the period of his “economic novels” is Gronlund’s Cooperative Commonwealth. The numerous parallels between the two men can be briefly and convincingly illustrated by the parallels (at times verbal, in spite of a six-year lapse) between this book and A Traveler from Altruria}^ In the analysis of American society both Howells and Gronlund noted public education as a surface ® One need not quarrel with the evidence in spite of the fact that the interviewer was representing a Fabian magazine. “G.,” the author of frequent articles in American Fabian, must have been the editor, W. J. Ghent. Gronlund had been a contributing editor, but had been dropped with the Dec., 1896, issue. * George Arms, “The Social Criticism of William Dean Howells" (unpublished dis¬ sertation, New York University, 1939), considers the influence of Tolstoy, Morris, George, Bellamy, et al. in its relation to Gronlund. Mr. W. F. Ekstrom, of the University of Illinois, has a dissertation in progress on the relation of Howells and Morris. "An Appreciation,” New York Times, sec. 7, p. 309 (Aug. 26, 1917). Ibid. Both are mentioned as typifying the renascence. As instances of his general attitude, see Life in Letters of William Dean Howells, ed. Mildred Howells (Garden City, 1928), I, 408 and II, 21 (for George); “Edward Bellamy,” Atlantic Monthly, LXXXII, 254 (Aug., 1898). Sources of parallels for the next two paragraphs are cited in their respective order. Education, cf. Gronlund, Cooperative Commonwealth in its Outlines (Boston [cop. 1884]), p. 260, with Howells, A Traveler from Altruria (New York, 1894), pp. 217-218; Poor, cf. Gronlund, p. 260, Howells, p. 160; Unions, cf. Gronlund, p. 273, Howells, p. 73; Militia, cf. Gronlund, p. 267, Howells, pp. 224-225; Farm Lands, cf. Gronlund, p. 267, Howells, p. 196; American Worker, cf. Gronlund, p. 62, Howells, p. 57; Slavery, cf. Gronlund, p. 262, Howells, p. 178; Economic Interpretation, cf. Gronlund, pp. 55-62, Howells, pp. 256-264; Previous Periods, cf. Gronlund, p. 59, Howells, p. 194; National¬ ization, cf. Gronlund, p. 123, Howells, p. 307; Cities, cf. Gronlund, p. 260, Howells, p. 281; Isolation, cf. Gronlund, p. 272, Howells, p. 299; Crime, cf. Gronlund, p. 245, Howells, p. 305; Prostitution, cf. Gronlund, p. 213, Howells, p. 194; Decentralization, cf. Gronlund, p. 119, Howells, pp. 281-282. 4 George Arms tendency toward socialism. Both men noted the interdependence of the poor and the essentially socialistic core of labor unions. Both felt that the militia, made up of petty bourgeoisie, was the foe of the workman; both saw the possibility of a gradual absorption of private farm lands through railroad monopoly. It was the belief of both that the American worker, though then perhaps not without prosperity, would soon be as poor as his fellow in Europe; that slavery remained in the wage system. In their attitude towards socialistic revolution, both men gave an economic interpretation of history with the use of similar termi¬ nology. Both conceived of previous periods as the necessary basis of future socialism. Again, both men saw the revolution as beginning with the nationalization of the greater enterprises; both saw the revolution as beginning in the cities; and both felt that the isolation of America would make revolution there peculiarly practicable. In the achieved commonwealth the two men prophesied the disappear¬ ance of crime, the end of prostitution, and a rapid decentralization of population. II Yet the significance of Gronlund is that he influenced Howells’s philosophy, and not his literary form. Except for Bellamy, whose popularization of the utopian novel must have been responsible for Howells’s utopian ventures,^^ Howells was not influenced esthet- ically by the other figures of the industrial renascence who have been mentioned. Furthermore, their influence was spiritual (that is, generating the condition rather than fixing the condition) and not doctrinal. Although Howells came to know Tolstoy in a lit¬ erary way, through reading his novels, Tolstoy’s influence was also primarily philosophical. It is true that Howells regarded Tolstoy as the perfector of Turgenev’s realism,^® and some refinements in Howells’s later realism can be attributed to his idol. But in one of his earliest papers on Tolstoy he wrote that he could not regard his novels esthetically, but only ethically.^^ Toward the end of his The credit given to Bellamy in A Traveler from Altruria, p. 312, only serves to anticipate inevitable comparison between Howells’s utopia and the earlier and more famous work. My Literary Passions (New York, 1895), p. 253. “T.yof Tolstoi,” Harper's Wee\ly, XXXI, 300 (April 23, 1887). Howells’s Social Realism 5 career he observed to Van Wyck Brooks that his own work as a writer showed no trace of Tolstoy’s influence.” The fact that in the past all the attention has been focused upon factors that were primarily philosophical in their influence upon Howells has resulted in the neglect of the literary side of his work. Nevertheless, it is the expression of his philosophy in his creative work that lends Howells much of his significance today, and it would be superficial to suppose that the acceptance of a socialistic philosophy would be automatically transferred into literary pro¬ duction without some literary precedent to impel such a transfer. The two main sources of literary influence which this paper treats are the Atlantic and its coterie and the work of Bjornstjerne Bjornson. These factors are not to be absolutely divided from philosophical ones; they are distinct in that they did not change Howells’s social thinking but gave him precedent and impetus to express his social thinking in his creative work. For the most part they were operative before the philosophical factors. Since How¬ ells’s interests during his early career were primarily esthetic, it was natural that the germinative process should have its inception on the literary rather than on the philosophic side. Howells’s association with the Atlantic and with the literary men of Boston is commonly thought to have considerably retarded his social development. In the case of his relationship with literary men the evidence points to an absolutely contrary conclusion, and even in the case of his association with the Atlantic the evidence suggests a strong qualification. While with another magazine Howells’s social thinking might have developed more rapidly and while his genteel estheticism may have been unquestioned during his association with the Atlantic, actually Howells did not repress his utterances on social matters in order to maintain the tradition of the magazine. Although conservative, the Atlantic of Howells’s time was not aloof from contemporary social issues, and under Howells it became more and more concerned with them. As editor Howells inau¬ gurated a department entitled “Politics,” and he himself contributed to it twice.^® Typical of a number of contributions are several dis- Brooks, “Mr. Howells at Work at Seventy-two,” World's Wor\, XVIII, 11549 (May, 1909). “Politics,” Atlantic Monthly, XXX, 127-128, 638-640 (July, Nov., 1872). 6 George Arms tinguished by names still commonly recognized today: Robert Dale Owen on his father’s utopia, Charles Francis Adams on railroad monopoly, a pro-and-con review of George’s Progress and Poverty, R. T. Ely on credit unions, and H. D. Lloyd on the relation of the oil companies to the railroads (with a sympathetic digression on the 1877 strikes)/® As editor and assistant editor Howells both decided on the publication of such articles and must have been stimulated by them. More relevant to problems of his own fiction are two articles by Howells dealing with writings which had been serialized in the magazine. Jonathan B. Harrison’s Certain Dangerous Tendencies of American Life (1880) in a conservative fashion recognized the change wrought by the hard times of 1878, sympathized with yet feared the workers, and felt they might be pacified by clever propa¬ ganda. Thomas Bailey Aldrich’s Stillwater Tragedy (1880) was a bitter antilabor novel which gave over a good portion of its final pages to a strike by marble workers. In the case of Harrison’s work, with its rather detailed description of individual workers, Howells felt that the material presented was susceptible to treatment in fic¬ tion.®® In the case of Aldrich’s novel he singled out for particular praise the reactionary treatment of the strike—“a contribution to our knowledge of such matters.”®^ That Aldrich, the disciple of romanticism and unyielding capitalism, followed him in the editor¬ ship may indicate that socially Howells grew more rapidly than the magazine; but his recommendation of The Stillwater Tragedy as a guide to labor problems does not indicate a tremendous cleavage between the two men’s social ideals at the time. Yet the interest shown in the strike, coupled with the literary approach to Harrison, reveals a Howells concerned with the impact of social problems on literature. Beginning with A Modern Instance Howells ceased publishing his novels in the Atlantic Monthly and began serializing them in the Owen, [on New Harmony,] ibid., XXXII, 224-236, 336-348 (Aug., Sept., 1873); Adams, “The State and the Railroads,” ibid., XXXVII-XXXVIII, 360-371, 691-699, 72-85 (March, June, July, 1876); W. B. Weeden and Willard Brown, [review,] ibid., XLVI, 846-854 (Dec., 1880); Ely, “German Cooperative Credit Unions,” ibid., XLVII, 207-223 (Feb., 1881); Lloyd, “The Story of a Great Monopoly,” ibid., XLVII, 317-334 (March, 1881). Although appearing after Howells’s resignation, the last item was undoubtedly published through his influence {Life in Letters, II, 46). “A New Observer,” Atlantic Monthly, XLV, 848 (June, 1880). “Mr. Aldrich’s Fiction,” ibid., XLVI, 697 (Nov., 1880). Howells’s Social Realism 7 Century Magazine. A Modern Instance, however, can hardly be considered merely as a release from the restrictions of the Atlantic; Howells was interested in earning a livelihood,and as he went from one magazine to another he was accustomed to receive more money.^ The Atlantic review of A Modern Instance cited it as his “greatest achievement,”^^ and the review of The Rise of Silas Lap- ham called it “a real piece of literature, which surely will not lose its charm when the distinctions of Nankeen Square and Beacon Street have become merely antiquarian nonsense.These reviews were as appreciative as those of his nonsocial Indian Summerf^ and of Dr. Breen s Practice^^ the last novel by Howells to be serialized in the Atlantic. Thus one may conclude that, had Howells re¬ mained with the Atlantic, his progress in social realism would have been as advanced as it otherwise was. As for the literary set in which Howells moved during his Bos¬ ton period, the advice from his two closest friends in it, Lowell of the older generation and James of the younger, was that Howells should follow those social directions in his novels which he finally did. In the case of the older man there was less advice than ap¬ proval of the accomplished fact. Howells later realized the limita¬ tions of Lowell’s political doctrines as well as his innate inclination to romanticism.^® But in an earlier stage of Howells’s development he recognized that Lowell had gone beyond him socially in con¬ demning pseudo-democratic America as the “Land of Broken Prom¬ ise”^® and in looking tolerantly upon the Irish immigrants.®” By advising Howells against accepting the Johns Hopkins professor¬ ship in 1882®^ and by advising him earlier to return to the West®® Lowell had tried to keep him free for novel writing and clear of Eastern effeteness. *’ Life in Letters, I, 296, 328-329. “Anon., "The Lounger,” Critic, IV, 307 (June 28, 1884). The figure of five thousand dollars refers to what the Century paid. This presumably was higher than what the Atlantic paid, though just what it paid is not known. ** H. E. Scudder, [review,] Atlantic Monthly, L, 710 (Nov., 1882). "Ibid., LVI, 556 (Oct., 1885). "Ibid., LVIl, 855-857 (June, 1886). "Ibid., XUX, 128-130 (Jan., 1882). "Literary Friends and Acquaintance (New York, 1900), pp. 220, 244. " Life in letters, I, 188. "Literary Friends and Acquaintance, p. 219. "Letters of fames Russell Lowell, ed. C. E. Norton (New York, 1894), II, 268-270. "Years of My Youth (New York [,1916]), p. 230. 8 George Arms Although acknowledging his individual preference for roman¬ ticism, Lowell showed enthusiasm for The Rise of Silas Lapham in a letter to Howells in 1885;®^ a year later he declared The Ministers Charge to be the best yet He expressed such a liking for James’s most social novel, The Princess Casamassima, that he noted to James his intention of reading it again and the praise was sincere, for he told Howells substantially the same thing.^^ This enthusiasm for the new direction that Howells had taken continued to Lowell’s death. “Anyhow, I am glad to have lived long enough to have read your book,”^^ was his comment on A Hazard of New Fortunes. Of a story without social implications— The Shadow of a Dream —he wrote that it was “daintily subtle,” but that it had not “pushed the Hazard of New Fortunes from its stool,” and that Howells “must try again, and the sooner the better.”®® Nor were such opinions mere flattery, for to Thomas Hughes, Low¬ ell, although noting an aversion to socialism, wrote of the novel: “A noble sentiment pervades it. . . . I felt in reading some parts of it as I used when the slave would not let me sleep.”®® But Lowell did not praise Howells merely because he was a friend. Of the Chicago anarchists he wrote that he felt the “ruffians well hanged.”^® In view of Howells’s efforts to secure their retrial, such a statement must have cut Howells to the quick. The exhortations from James that Howells broaden his field and the approval of his social direction are of particular interest since the larger aspect of society is seldom reflected in James’s novels and since it is generally believed that James restrained Howells. In 1884 James wrote confidentially to Howells: “. . . I regard you as the great American naturalist. I don’t think you go far enough, and you are haunted with romantic phantoms and a tendency to factitious glosses. . . In Harper s Wee\ly two years later James congratulated Howells upon forsaking the Italian for the American scene and upon manifesting his new interest in plebeian life: This production \The Rise of Silas Lapham^ had struck me as the author’s high water mark until I opened the monthly sheets of Lemuel Letters of James Russell Lowell, II, 297. Ibid., II, 306. New Letters of fames Russell Lowell, ed. M. A. DeWoIfe Howe (New York, 1932), p. 296. Life in Letters, I, 388. New Letters of James Russell Lowell, p. 335. Ibid., p. 341. Letters of James Russell Lowell, II, 399. Ibid., II, 394. Letters of Henry James, ed. Percy Lubbock (New York, 1920), I, 105. Howells’s Social Realism 9 Barker [The Minister’s Charge\, in which the art of imparting a palpi¬ tating interest to common things and unheroic lives is pursued (or is destined, apparently, to be pursued) to an even higher point.^^ Even here the implication is that Howells could broaden his study of the social scene more; nor did this advice by James mark only a brief emotion coincident with his own writing of The Princess Casamassima. For the advice continued into the 1890’s. James reported to Howells in that year that A Hazard of New Fortunes had filled him with “communicable rapture,” that it was a “much bigger feat” than The Ministers Charge; but he would note at the same time that Howells still turned his back on much.^® Later in the same year he minimized an apparent misgiving on Howells’s part by telling him that he was absolutely on the right track in his recent writing.^^ Although Roswell Smith, the associate of Richard Gilder in the conduct of the Century Magazine, was not a member of the Atlantic coterie, his advice is further indication that Howells’s associates wished him to progress towards greater realism and sharper social criticism in his work. In constant correspondence with Howells during the period when his stories were being serialized in the Century, Smith did not refrain from advice and suggestions.^® In 1885 he urged Howells to use the motif of capital and labor in a novel.^® Although Howells did not act immediately upon this advice and in his writing of A Hazard of New Fortunes was prob¬ ably uninfluenced by it, it is nevertheless of great importance in its indication that Howells’s social development was fostered by his associates. The advice of Lowell and James and Smith was supplemented by others of the Boston coterie, notably Thomas Wentworth Hig- ginson and Brooks Adams. Higginson, who lived in Cambridge after 1878, was admired by Howells both for his abolitionist activ- Henry James, “William Dean Howells,” Harper's Weet^ly, XXX, 394 (June 19, 1886). Letters of Henry fames, I, 163-165. Harvard Library: Howells Collection. A letter from James to Howells dated Dec. 7 [1890]. Harvard Library: Howells Collection. In a letter dated March 21, 1885, from Smith to Howells, he expressed the hope that Howells would end The Rise of Silas Lapham unhappily; in fact, all of his advice is towards a sterner and not weaker realism. ** Ibid., a letter dated May 17, 1885, from Smith to Howells. Smith’s hope was that such a novel would postpone or prevent the impending struggle. 10 George Arms ities^^ and for his later social thinking/® In one of the first critical studies of Howells, the social weight of his novels was praised and the belief was expressed that he was ready for a “bolder sweep of arm, a more generous handling of full-sized humanity,” although somewhat inconsistently the drunken scene in Lady of the Aroostoo\ was condemned as “so realistic as to be out of place.”^® Brooks Adams was associated with Howells as an occasional con¬ tributor to the Atlantic; while Adams had had reason for disliking h im because of the recent rejection of an article,®® he nevertheless indorsed the use of Yankee background in The Undiscovered Country, which he believed to be the novelist’s strongest work: “Not to mince matters, Mr. Howells hitherto seems to us to have spent his strength on rather small game.”®^ Thus the Boston which Howells knew best and loved most was by no means an obstacle in his progress towards keener social criticism. At the same time in his critical papers Howells was making every effort to read into that Boston as much liberality as he possibly could; to call attention to the antislavery interests of Longfellow®^ and to Emerson’s approval of John Brown.®® By no means unaware of the shortcomings of his environment—a Socrates in Boston might receive no better treatment than in Athens®^—^he could later excuse the older generation by observing that few men are good for more than one reform.®® Howells indeed realized the conservatism of Boston where such conservatism existed, and real¬ ized it as a shortcoming. There was, however, a Boston whose shortcomings Howells did not excuse and whose snobberies he did not truckle to. He had [Review of Higginson’s Army Ufe in a Blac\ Regiment,Atlantic Monthly, XXIV, 643-644 (Nov., 1869). Literature and Ufe (New York, 1902), p. 294. Higginson, Short Studies of American Authors (Boston [, 1879]), pp. 37, 39. But Howells’s fondness for drunkenness as a literary matter remained unimpaired; see A Modern Instance (Boston [, 1910]), pp. 300-309, and The Rise of Silas Lapham (Boston [) 1937]). PP- 212-216. On several occasions, as here, citations are not made from first editions. Harvard Library: Howells Collection. Letter from Adams to Howells, dated Feb. 13, 1880. '^Brooks Adams, “The Undiscovered Country,” International Review, IX, 150 (Aug., 1880). “Editor’s Study,” Harper's Magazine, LXXIII, 155 (June, 1886). '^^Ihid., LXXVI, 477 (Feb., 1888). Ibid., LXXIV, 986 (May, 1887). Literary Friends and Acquaintance, p. 136. Howells’s Social Realism II already treated this aspect of Boston in A Chance Acquaintance^^ More ample and biting treatment was made fifteen years later in April liopes. The conclusion, in which Dan Mavering fails to marry a Yonkers girl and is all but condemned to married life with a Bostonian, was the altogether unambiguous commentary of the author. The mistake of identifying Howells with the com¬ munity which he portrayed, a mistake perpetrated by so many critics, has already been indicated by Cooke.®^ Contemporary crit¬ icism also recognized what Howells was doing; for instance, a reviewer for the Nation, having in mind not only the novels men¬ tioned but most of the other novels published in the i88o’s, referred to the “Boston under a scalpel” group.®® No certain line divided the Cambridge literary aristocrats from those fringes of Boston society that did not esteem the life of letters with equal fervor. But if the novels may be used as evidence,®® Howells himself perceived such a distinction. Reminiscences and letters indicate as fully as documents can that Howells, first as the protege of Lowell and later in his own right, received the complete endorsement of Boston literary society. But in contrast with this circumstance is the snobbish disregard for authors shown by Ar- buton, a Boston aristocrat,®® and the attitude of Helen, his female counterpart, towards the literary man, Evans: “As soon as she learned what Mr. Evans’s business was, she understood, of course, that they could never have been people that people knew.”®^ After Howells left Boston this breach between him and the closely re¬ stricted upper-class society widened. But that there was no com¬ plete amity during the period of his Boston residence helps to explain his earlier observations on equality in the Boston novels; it also helps to explain his later identification of the author with the worker, when he wished that he could make his “fellow-artists '*/T Chance Acquaintance (Boston, 1873), pp. 152-153. D. G. Cooke, William Dean Howells: A Critical Study (New York [, 1922]), pp. 114-115. Anon., “Mr. Howells’s Latest Novel,” Nation, L, 454 (June 5, 1890). Life in Letters, I, 367, may be a faint suggestion: “Besides that, I keenly enjoyed these fine touches by which you [James] suggest a more artistically difficult and evasive Boston than I ever get at. The fashionableness which is so unlike the fashionableness of other towns. . . .” Cf. ihid., I, 388 (to James, after publication of The Minister’s Charge)-. “Into Boston society I’m asked very little and go less.” '“‘A Chance Acquaintance, p. 165. “ Woman’s Reason (Boston, 1883), p. 252. 12 George Arms realize that economically they are the same as mechanics, farmers, day-laborers.”®^ Ill A second source of literary influence may be found in the work of Bjdrstjerne Bjornson. Although his influence in stimukting Howells’s early realism cannot be controverted, he has heretofore been altogether neglected by critics even in this aspect. In stimu¬ lating Howells’s later social realism, the evidence of Bjdrnson’s influence is likewise convincing. With either case, however, the problem is much too complex to argue Bjornson as a sole influence, for it can be justly considered only with such early indebtedness as that to Goldoni and with such later indebtedness as that to Turgenev in mind. In 1870 Howells had read three of Bjdrnson’s pastoral romances in translation; in a long review he commented most favorably upon the simplicity, the humbleness of the characters, and their decency (although portions he quoted were concerned with illegitimacy, drunkenness, and attempted murder).®® Of the works and the author he concluded: From him we can learn . . . that the lives of men and women, if they he honestly studied, can, without surprising incident or advantageous circumstance, be made as interesting in literature as are the smallest private affairs of the men and women in one’s own neighborhood; that telling a thing is enough, and explaining it too much. . . Such a conclusion shows the real debt which Howells owed to Bjornson, although Howells later forgot the important effect that Bjornson had upon him when in his reminiscences he slighted his influence in comparison to Turgenev’s.®® In the summer following his review he had journeyed down the St. Lawrence, and these “smallest private affairs” had been put down in Howells’s first attempt at fiction, Their Wedding Journey. Thus he could exclaim “The Man of Letters as a Man of Business,” Scribner’s Monthly, XIV, 445 (Oct., 1893). Reprinted in Literature and Life in 1902. °° [Review of Bjornson’s Ame, The Happy Boy, The Fisher Maidenf] Atlantic Monthly, XXV, 504-512 (April, 1870). ** Ibid., p. 512. My Literary Passions, p. 230. Ordinarily Howells’s reminiscent writing is highly dependable, yet it sometimes embodies very real inaccuracies. Thus My Literary Passions, p. 254, indicates that Howells was swept away by enthusiasm when he first read Tolstoy; the actual letter to Perry {Life in Letters, I, 372) shows that Howells still retained a marked preference for Turgenev at the time. Howells’s Social Realism 13 in that novel—well before he had read Turgenev and much more in the spirit of Bjdrnson’s pastoralism than in that of the Russian’s more somber realism: “Ah! poor Real Life, which I love, can I make others share the delight I find in thy foolish and insipid face?”®® A few months after the first review another appeared, this time of The Railroad and the Churchyard; in respect to it Howells noted Bjdrnson’s use of “local political machinery.”®^ Evidently the Norwegian was not forgotten in the intervening years between these first reviews and his visit in Cambridge during the winter of 1880-1881.®® In the meantime Bjdrnson had under¬ gone the same change that was later to mark Howells, shifting from a more general to a distinctly social realism—a shift marked by the production of the dramas The Editor (1874) and The Ban\- rupt (1874). During the Cambridge visit the two struck up an intimate friendship, in part because of Howells’s patience with Bjdrnson’s imperfect English, which excluded him from the ac¬ quaintance of other Cambridge authors.®® In his weekly letter to his father Howells referred to Bjdrnson as a “great genius”; he was a hot republican, the son added, and was in disgrace at home for having called the Norwegian king an ass.^® The friendship that was begun at this time lasted throughout their lives. In an interview granted in 1887 Howells discussed Bjdrnson immediately after paying tribute to Tolstoy;^® although he attributed to him the source of his ideas only in regard to the “beauty of natural simple fiction,” the strong ethical bent of Howells’s mind at this time indicates that mentioning him at all attached a social connotation to his works. This interpretation is borne out by How¬ ells’s remarking some time later in a conversation with Boyesen that when he had been probing the diflSculties of writing novels and their relation to life Bjdrnson had said abruptly: “We do not "'‘Their Wedding Journey (Boston, 1875), p. 67. The assumption should not be made that the relationship was one of servile imitation. Howells, himself, wrote {Life in Letters, I, 162): “. . . I see clear before me a path in literature which no one else has tried, and which I believe I can make most distincdy my own.” [Review,] Atlantic Monthly, XXVI, 638 (Nov., 1870). "" [Review of H. H. Boyesen’s Gunnar,] ibid., XXXIV, 624-625 (Nov., 1874). Boyesen is compared with Bjornson. H. H. Boyesen, “Bjornson in the United States,” Critic, I, 58 (March 12, 1881). Life in Letters, I, 289. Ibid., I, 423-424; II, 252-253. “Mr. Howells on Realism,” New York Tribune, July 10, 1887, p. 12; reprinted in the Critic, XI, 32 (July 16, 1887). George Arms M put enough Howells was later to feel only a sexual connota¬ tion in this cryptic sentence; yet in view of the literary direction in which Bjdrnson was then working, the sentence probably meant that more life in social as well as sexual manifestations was called for. In 1889 Howells enumerated the works of Bjornson in his second or social period: The Ban\rupt (1874), The Editor (1874), The King (1877), Captain Manzana (1879), Dust (1880), The Glove (1883), Flags in the City and Harbor (1884).^* Although none of these works, with the exception of Captain Manzana and Flags in the City and Harbor, seem to have been translated into English before 1890, Howells could have read them almost from the begin¬ ning in German or French. The fact that these works were named by Howells for the first time in February, 1889, does not mean that Howells read the works listed only just before he wrote the review. The point of departure in the review is the novel Sigurd Slembe, which he had just read. The first four works listed by Howells were probably read by him during Bjdrnson’s visit in 1880-1881 or shortly afterwards. In a letter written in 1880 Bjdrnson, using the Norwegian title, requested his wife to send him a copy of The King, with the notation that Howells wanted to translate it.^® It thus is very likely that Howells read The King at this time. In view of the continued friendship of the two men, it is also likely that Howells read The Bankrupt and The Editor at the same time, or was at least very familiar with them. This interpretation is reinforced when one considers the marked similarities of the plays to Howells’s own work. The King is a drama written about the attempt of a ruler to become a democratic monarch. When Howells had the chance to read it, thd discussion of equality as well as the designation of America as the source of republican sentiment^® would have held a good deal of interest for him. The discussion of socialism^^ is brought in obliquely, in a manner not dissimilar to Howells’s treatment m The Ministers “Real Conversations—I. A Dialogue between William Dean Howells and Hjalmar Hjorth Boycsen,” McClure’s Magazine, I, ii (June, 1893). ’‘“Editor’s Study,” Harper's Magazine, LXXVIII, 491 (Feb., 1889). Kamp-Liv [of Bjornson], ed. Halvdan Koht (Oslo, 1932), I, 226. Three Dramas by Bjornson, ed. R. F. Sharp (London [, 1924]), pp. 198-201, 210. Ibid., pp. 223-224. Howells’s Social Realism 15 Charge'^ and April Hopes The condemnation of Christianity for its inability to face social issues®® is also reflected in Min¬ ister’s Charge; but Howells’s later insistence upon this point is more directly traceable to Tolstoy. Finally, the riot 'm. The King may have been stored in Howells’s memory for its later realization in the strike scene used so successfully in A Hazard of New Fortunes. The theme of the drama The Bankrupt is precisely that em¬ ployed 'm The Rise of Silas Lapham. In the drama the business which fails is more speculative®^ than Lapham’s, but both Lapham and the “bankrupt” resisted the temptation to escape bankruptcy by unethical means and both were rewarded by a tranquil old age upon a small subsistence. Except upon one occasion when the question of what is to happen to the workers dependent upon the success of the firms arises,®^ there is no specific similarity; to a partisan Howells’s interpretation seems indeed the more powerful. But the similarity of the plan and theme points towards the influ¬ ence of the former. In The Editor Bjdrnson again introduced oblique references to socialism,®® as he had done in The King. The play is itself an illustration of the abuse of power by the press, for through the editor’s slanders one man was killed and another almost ruined. Though in A Modern Instance the main motif is that of divorce, at the same time Howells made a good deal of Hubbard’s moral obtuseness in his journalistic practices and canvassed the whole question of the uses to which modern journalism was put.®^ Again, though the question of crime was the main theme in The Quality of Mercy, Howells also treated the journalistic practices that sur¬ rounded it.®" Both Bjdrnson and Howells emphasized the effect upon the friends of those subjected to the calumnies of the press.®® In such novels as A Hazard of New Fortunes, The World of Chance, and The Story of a Flay Howells used a literary background that was a part of his own experience—the magazine, the novel, '^The Minister's Charge (Boston, 1887), pp. 241-242. April Hopes, pp. 130-131. Three Dramas by Bjdrnson, pp. 282-284. Ibid., p. 130-134. ^^Ibid., p. 142; cf. The Rise of Silas Lapham, p. 300. Three Dramas by Bjdrnson, pp. 18, 64. A Modern Instance, pp. 295-300, 358-367. ^^The Quality of Mercy (New York, 1892), pp. 114, 121. Three Dramas by Bjdrnson, pp. 4-10; The Quality of Mercy, pp. 163-173. i 6 George Arms and the play. But unless his contributions to New York papers in the summer of 1865 are so accounted, Howells had had no experi¬ ence in metropolitan journalism, and indeed in the case of The Quality of Mercy had to appeal to the editor of the Boston Tran¬ script for information on background.®^ Consequently it is reason¬ able to look for a literary precedent in his use of a journalistic background. Such a literary precedent Bjdrnson’s Editor provided. Other works mentioned in the 1889 review were Dust, Captain Manzana, Flags in the City and Harbor, and The Glove, respectively dealing with immortality, civic interests, inherited criminal tend¬ encies, and the double sexual standard. Although these seem to have had no direct effect upon Howells’s works, like the three plays of Bjdrnson they must have helped teach Howells the possibility of using social background and social problems in his novels. Ad¬ miration for Bjdrnson was too great during this critical period in Howells’s social development and parallels in their works were too numerous to avoid awarding a significant place to Bjdrnson as a literary influence. An evil-of-drink motif present mThe Bankrupt seems even to have crept into the treatment of Putney in Annie Ktlhurn, a moral attitude towards drinking distinctly not in How¬ ells’s metier. Writing less than a year after his own conversion to socialism, Howells noted in the 1889 review the literary transmuta¬ tion that Bjdrnson had earlier undergone, and felt that his change from a democrat to a social and economic radical was inevitable in the development of those who profoundly sympathized with the people.®® Thus Bjdrnson not only provided a pattern which may have been that of several of Howells’s novels but in striking fashion anticipated the pattern of his career. In 1895, after Howells had ceased to champion so ardently the use of social motifs in letters, he mentioned Bjdrnson with the wish that he might turn more often from political to literary concerns.®® At the same time he was to deny having received an “undue impression” from him; for somehow Bjdrnson in retrospect was never as great to Howells as Bjdrnson just read. It is not to be presumed that the impetus towards the expression of social criticism in novels came solely from the conditions and Lift in Letters, II, 17. " “Editor’s Study,” Harper’s Magazine, LXXVIII, 491 (Feb., 1889). “Life and Letters,” Harper’s Weekly, XXXIX, 460 (May 18, 1895). Howells’s Social Realism 17 work analyzed—the Atlantic background and the writing of Bjorn- son. Howells’s reviews indicate a knowledge of several novels with social criticism, such as W. H. White’s Mark Rutherford stories and James’s Princess Casamassima?^ But those influences which have been cited are the most significant both in their correction of the nature of certain relationships (with the Atlantic background) already admitted but misunderstood, and in the establishing of a possible relationship (with Bjornson) that has been neglected. "’“Editor’s Study,” Harper's Magazine, LXXII, 485-486 (Feb., 1886); LXXIV, 829 (April, 1887). A Note on Howells and "The Smiling Aspects of Life” Edwin H. Cady FASHION has arisen in criticism of William Dean Howells .ZIl of explaining the reticence of his realism, its failure to in¬ clude lust, terror, and squalor, by suggesting that he failed to face these elements in American life because he was an unconscionable Victorian optimist. Much of this opinion has centered upon a phrase lifted from its context in Criticism and Fiction (1891): “the more smiling aspects of life, which are the more American.”^ Yet the bulk of Howells’s own work concerns itself far more with quiet disillusion than with optimism; the smiles in his books are often wry; and some of the best of his books cry to the world for social reform. In the light of this seeming conflict, a re-reading of “the smiling aspects” phrase, in its context, seems indicated. Such a reading will show, I think, that hasty treatment, fortified by the antagonism natural to younger men in revolt against “the Dean of American Letters,” has led to a tradition unfair to Howells and to a popular misunderstanding of his mind. Jejune to exponents of hard-boiled naturalism though Howells’s writings may seem, there is little in his best books which could be called cheerily optimistic. His poetry, the most intimately personal portion of his work, is soaked in melancholy. Even the early, sum¬ mery novels such as A Chance Acquaintance, A Foregone Con¬ clusion, or The Lady of the Aroostook are hardly gay or Rotarian in mood. Still less so is A Modern Instance. It is their trademark, almost, that in them happiness is never purely bright but always overcast by social complexities and incompatibility. The later, greater novels are full of quiet heartbreak. In The Rise of Silas Lapham the wreckage of lives litters the hero’s path to moral melioration, and the tragic note deepens steadily throughout Annie ' (Library ed.. New York, 1910), p. Z5Z. Though John Macy, in Spirit of American Literature (New York, 1913), saw Howells as crippled by “the hypocrisy and superficial optimism of America” (p. 282), Van Wyck Brooks seems first to have misread this phrase in support ofsuchaview. In The Ordeal of (New York, 1920), p. 68, Brooks held that Howells’s “prime dogma” was that “the more smiling aspects of life are the more American”; see also "Literary Life in America,” Emerson and Others (New York, 1927), p. 239. For instances of the vogue of the phrase see Carl Van Doren, The American Novel (New York, 1921), pp. 138-139, and the rev. ed. (New York, 1940), p. 124; Vernon L. Farrington, The Beginnings of Critical Realism (New York, 1930), pp. 242, 249; James D. Hart, The Oxford Companion to American Literature (New York, 1941), p. 342; Ernest Marchand, (Stanford University Press, 1942), p. 4; and Edward Wagenknecht, review of Booth Tarkington’s Kate Fennigate, New York Times Book Review, May 23, 1943. Even Alfred Kazin, whose understanding of Howells is unusually broad, seems embarrassed and apologetic in handling the “smiling aspects” phrase ( Oti Native Grounds, New York, 1942, p. 20). “The Smiling Aspects of Life” 19 Kilburn, A Hazard of New Fortunes, The Quality of Mercy, and The World of Chance. If The Landlord at Lion’s Head and The Son of Royal Langbrith, which follow, had less of crisis and catas¬ trophe, their pessimism is deeper; for Howells’s mood, as he assayed the effects upon human personality of living in the contemporary world, approached futility. That is not to say that Howells had the outlook of a major tragedian or that all the works of his artistic maturity were somber in tone. Yet his important novels were mainly pessimistic and critical in tone and intent. They point to¬ ward the conclusion which Basil March drew from his adventures in A Hazard of New Fortunes, published in 1890, only a year be¬ fore Criticism and Fiction. Ruthless materialism, March felt, was swallowing up American democracy until life became a matter for all men of “pushing and pulling, climbing and crawling, thrusting aside and trampling underfoot, lying, cheating, stealing . . . covered with blood and dirt and sin and shame ... to a palace of our own, or to the poor-house, which is about the only possession we can claim in common with our brother-men.”^ This is not optimism. Is there, then, a fundamental contradiction between Howells’s practical pessimism and the intent of the passage which contains the “smiling aspects” phrase.? A careful reading of the context will, I think, show that no such contradiction really exists. Through¬ out Criticism and Fiction Howells fought for the right of modern realism to be heard in England and America, alternating pleas with attacks upon “romanticistic” literature. At the point in ques¬ tion, he had begun to examine the various types of Continental realism with a view toward determining their utility as models for the writer in English. Was it possible, he asked, to write the Rus¬ sian novel in America? The answer was negative: It is one of the reflections suggested by Dostoievsky’s [r/c] novel, The Crime and Punishment [rfc], that whoever struck a note so profoundly tragic in American fiction would do a false and mistaken thing. . . . Whatever their deserts, very few American novelists have been led out to be shot, or finally exiled to the rigors of a winter at Duluth; and in a land where journeyman carpenters and plumbers strike for four dollars a day the sum of hunger and cold is comparatively small, and the wrong from class to class has been almost inappreciable, though this is changing for the worse. Our novelists, therefore, concern themselves with the more smiling aspects of life, which are the more American, and seek the uni¬ versal in the individual rather than the social interests. It is worth while, ' A Hazard of New Fortunes (Library ed., New York, 1910), p. 507. The best treatment of the development of social protest in Howells’s mind is to be found in W. F. Taylor, The Economic Novel in America (University of North Carolina Press, 1942), pp. 214-243. 20 Edwin H. Cady even at the risk of being called commonplace, to be true to our well-to-do actualities.® The purpose here is to compare. That the aspects of American life were not absolutely and universally smiling, Howells testified in his novels. But he felt forced to recognize that, as against con¬ ditions in Czarist Russia,^ our well-to-do actualities did not warrant equal gloom. The whole plea of Criticism and Fiction was for “the truthful treatment of material.”® For an American to adopt the Russian mood would be to succumb like any dime-novelist to “the love of the passionate and the heroic” which “is such a crude and unwholesome thing, so deaf and blind to all the most delicate and important facts of art and life, so insensible to the subtle values in either,”® and against which the whole of Criticism and Fiction was an ardent tract. The famous passage concerning the “smiling aspects of life” was not, then, a counsel of namby-pamby opti mism to novelists. It had a direct and limited meaning designed to warn American writers away from a false and artificial injection of Russian effects into their work. Howells meant it for artistic, not social criticism. As his own novels, critical articles,^ poems, correspondence, and acts such as the defense of the Chicago Anarchists all show, he was pro¬ foundly concerned with decidedly unsmiling aspects of American life in his own time and prepared to fall into pessimistic moods about them. In justice to the man and his mind and in justice to the student who would understand him and his seminal function in the history of recent American letters, it should no longer be said or implied that he was an irresponsible, even unintelligent, opti¬ mist because he once wrote of “the more smiling aspects of life, which are the more American.” ’ Criticism and Fiction, p. 252. Whether it shows influence or merely coinciding thought, Robert Frost’s question, “How are we to write / The Russian novel in America / As long as life goes on so unterribly?”'gives Howells a strong and penetrating ally on this point. See “New Hampshire,” Collected Poems of Robert Frost (New York, 1942), p. 207. ■* For a vivid account of the sufferings of Dostoevski to which Howells had reference, see A. Yarmolinsky, Dostoievsky (New York, 1934). ' Criticism and Fiction, p. 229. ^ This passage was deleted from the Library ed. of Criticism and Fiction, 1910, possibly because the context attacked the “thumb-fingered” British critics who had opposed the doctrine of realism but with whom Howells presumably felt reconciled after receiving his Litt. D. Oxon. in 1904, or possibly, as Professor Clarence Gohdes pertinently suggests, because Howells now hoped for large English sales of his books. The quotation may be found, however, in the first edition of Criticism and Fiction (New York, 1891), pp. 124-125. ^ Howells, of course, early championed such pessimistic realists and even naturalists as Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, and Hamlin Garland. See, for instance, his preface to Garland’s Main- Travelled Roads (Chicago, 1893); “Mr. Garland’s Books,” North American Review, CXCVl, 523- 528 (Oct., 1912); and "Frank Norris,” ibid., CLXXV, 769-778 (Dec., 1902). Materials and Form in Howell’s First Novels William M. Gibson H owells serialized his first novel, Their Wedding Jour¬ ney, in the Atlantic Monthly from July to December and published it in volume form December 27, 1871. But the thirty- four year old ex-printer and reporter, by this time editor of the Atlantic, had also written nearly eight hundred poems, editorials, reviews, short stories, travel sketches, and columns of social com¬ ment for Ohio, Boston, and New York periodicals before writing his first novel. This mass of little-known newspaper and magazine material dating from 1852, when he first published a poem, forms rather staggering proof of his youthful industry and literary passion. It is of definite interest biographically. A portion of these apprentice writings, moreover—the portion to be dealt with here—reveals much about Howells’s choice of materials and his method of giving them form in his first three novels, A Chance Acquaintance, A Foregone Conclusion, and particularly Their Wedding Journey} Political controversy, anti-slavery argument, and intense pro- Union feeling filled Howells’s writing during the fifties and the late sixties after he returned from his Venice consulship. Such early stories as “The Independent Candidate,” and “A Tale of Love and Politics”^ suggest the strong political biases of Howells’s father and of the family newspaper, the Ashtabula Sentinel. The prewar columns, “Letter from Columbus” in the Cincinnati Gazette and “News and Humors of the Mails” in the Ohio State Journal, are full of union and anti-slavery sentiment and argument, and fre- ^ For identification and listing of this material, see William M. Gibson and George Arms, “A Bibliography of William Dean Howells,” New York Public Library Bulletin, L-LI, 675-698, 857-868, 909-928, 49-56, 91-105, 213-248 (Sept., Nov.-Jan.-Feb., April, 1946-1947), and subsequent issues. Before 1871 Howells had, of course, published a volume of poetry and a campaign biography of Lincoln, ghost written a book on Chile, and put together two popular travel books based on his experience as American consul at Venice during the war years, as well as a volume of Cambridge sketches. * “A Tale of Love and Politics, Adventures of a Printer Boy,” Ashtabula Sentinel, XXII, I (Sept. I, 1853); “The Independent Candidate, A Story of Today,” ibid., XXIII-XXIV, pp. I (Nov. 23, Nov. 30, Dec. 7, Dec. 21, Dec. 28, 1854, Jan. 4, Jan. 11, Jan. 18, 1855). 22 William M. Gibson quently praise John Brown.^ Howells visited a number of camps in Ohio and reported the military convention at Columbus in 1858 and 1859, and in 1861 wrote a series of letters for the New York World entitled “From Ohio,” which described the war movements in that state and the “splendid rapidity with which Ohio filled up her quota of thirteen regiments.”^ In Venice during the war, Howells suffered an almost Jamesian self-consciousness about not serving in the Union Army. After the war, in his “Letter from New York” for the Cincinnati Gazette and in “Minor Topics” of the Nation, he wrote more general social comment, on holidays, actresses and the stage, murder, rents, divorce (an interest that later culminated in A Modern Instance), the Fenians in New York, and city and national politics, still with strong Republican convince- ment.® As one might suspect, politics and war appear only casually in Their Wedding Journey, A Chance Acquaintance, and A Foregone Conclusion. But Kitty Ellison, it will be remembered, is the daugh¬ ter of a man killed in the border feuds of Kansas; as a child she had heard John Brown sing “Blow ye the trumpet, blow”;® her uncle had run a principal entrepot in the underground railroad, and her cousins had fought in Iowa and Wisconsin regiments.'^ The Negro waiters of Their Wedding Journey find unobtrusive praise in its pages, and the impoverished slaveholder visiting Niagara is viewed with mixed sympathy and irony by Basil March, Howells’s spokes¬ man in the novel.® March also finds Canada’s “overweening loyalty” ® The “Letter from Columbus” ran from Jan. through April, 1857, and from the middle of Feb. through March, 1858, in the Cincinnati Gazette. “News and Humors of the Mails” appeared from Nov., 1858, several times a week through Feb., i860, in the Ohio State Journal. See also “Gerrit Smith,” Ohio State Journal, XXIII, 2 (Nov. 15, 1859); “Old Brown,” Ashtabula Sentinel, XXIX, 1 (Jan. 25, i860); “The Pilot’s Story,” Atlantic Monthly, VI, 323-325 (Sept., i860); and “En Passant,” Ohio State Journal, XXIV, i (July 28, i860). ‘“War Movements in Ohio,” New York World, I, 6 (May 15, 1861); “From Ohio,” ibid., I-II, 3, 4, 8 (April 22, May 21, June 10, July 17, 1861); “The Military Convention at Columbus,” Cincinnati Gazette, LXVIII, i (Jan. 20, 21, 1858); “I Visit Camp Harrison,” Ohio State Journal, XXIII, 2 (Aug. 31, 1859). ' The “Letter from New York” was printed in the Cincinnati Gazette every week or two from Nov. 20, 1865, to Feb. 20, 1866, and covered much the same material Howells commented on in “Minor Topics” in the Nation. “Minor Topics” ran from Nov. 30, 1865, through April 26, 1866, a series of twenty-two articles. * A Chance Acquaintance (Boston, 1873), pp. 4, 6. ’ Ibid., pp. 5, 7. ^ Their Wedding Journey (Boston, 1872), pp. 93-94, 153-155. Compare Howells’s comment on Southern visitors to Niagara in “En Passant,” Ohio State Journal, XXIV, i (July 28, i860). Howells’s First Novels 23 to England distasteful,” much as Professor Elmore, of A Fearful Re¬ sponsibility, abetted by the American consul, Hoskins, “fought for our cause against the English” in Italy during the Civil War in lieu of fighting the Southerner/® In A Foregone Conclusion, Ferris, who was Hoskins’s predecessor, saw “a good deal of fighting and fever and ague” in the Southwest before he was invalided out.“ “The shabby despots who govern New York, and the swindling railroad kings whose word is law to the whole land,” the Fenians and their troubles, and New York’s daily murder find mention as well in Their Wedding Journey More specifically, Howells’s early writing contains plot ideas and incidents, often farcical, often about courtship and marriage, which reappear in modified form in the novels. His early persistent phobia as a result of being bitten by a dog Howells objectified in a story with a strong element of farce, “How I Lost a Wife, An Epi¬ sode in the Life of a Bachelor” (1854). As a minor initial incident, in The Landlord at Lions Head Jeff Durgin frightens a child with his dog, but Arbuton’s protecting Kitty Ellison from attack by a furious bulldog in A Chance Acquaintance constitutes a climactic action in the novel.“Why He Married,” turning on the dis¬ covery that a young man’s niece is a baby and not a young woman, and “Busily Engaged, A Plot for a Farce,” in which the protagonist proposes in turn to each of nine daughters in a family of girls, were written in 1866 and clearly anticipate in dialogue skill though not in their extravagantly improbable situations Howells’s very popular series of one-act farces.^^ “Fast and Firm, A Romance at Mar¬ seilles,” revolves around the typically Howellsian situation of a ^ Their Wedding Journey, p. 218. A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories (Boston, 1881), pp. 5, 14, 22. A Foregone Conclusion (Boston, 1875), p. 245. Their Wedding Journey, pp. 29, 48, 219, 233. Compare “How I Lost a Wife, An Episode in the Life of a Bachelor,” Ashtabula Sentinel, XXIII, i (May 18, 1854) with The Landlord at Lion's Head (New York, 1897), pp. 18-19 and A Chance Acquaintance, pp. 171-174. A Columbus hackman in 1858 stopped a driverless runaway horse, which drew a car¬ riage with two frightened women in it, incurring injury to himself, and Howells reported the accident vividly. This “brave and noble” act, though a common enough kind of inci¬ dent, may well have been in the novelist’s mind when he was formulating the climactic action of Indian Summer many years later. Compare “The Military Convention at Colum¬ bus,” Cincinnati Gazette, LXVIII, i (Jan. 20, 1858) and Indian Summer (Boston, 1886), PP- 356-357- “Why He Married,” Ashtabula Sentinel, XXXV, i (Oct. 31, 1866) and “Busily Engaged, A Plot for a Farce,” ibid., XXXV, i (Oct. 3, 10, 1866). 24 William M. Gibson young man and woman, who have become acquainted by accident in Italy, being mistaken for man and wife. Since this short story reached only the readers of the Ashtabula Sentinel in 1866, Howells placed Kitty Ellison and Arbuton of A Chance Acquaintance in the same situation seven years later.Lastly, the ideas which were per¬ sonified to make the dramatic conflict in A Foregone Conclusion, perhaps Howells’s best novel of his early period, interested him much earlier. They may well have first arisen from his contem¬ plation of the life of the Gray Nuns in Montreal, which he set down at length in a serialized column, “Glimpses of Summer Travel” in i860. Certainly he wrote, abstractly, the whole theme of the novel in a New York Times editorial of 1866, “Marriage among the Italian Priesthood,” asserting in part: All travelers and sojourners in Italy will consent that it is an important step, which, if once taken, will do more than any other to advance social purity and religious freedom and independence. It would be scarcely useful to rehearse here the evils which intelligent Italians believe to re¬ sult from the celibacy of their priesthood, or to define the anomalous position which the priest, isolated from mankind by an ascetic supersti¬ tion of the middle ages, holds in the ameliorated society of this day. . . . As the celibacy of the priesthood is blamed for much of the corruption which afflicts Italian society, the present advocacy of clerical marriages by a respectable number of the priesthood seems the most natural and consequent growth from present conditions.^® Here it is apparent Howells was taking a sanguine editorial view of the possibility of reform. But in A Foregone Conclusion he opposed the sharply disparate character and thinking of his Ameri¬ can girl and Italian priest, with much of James’s skill for tragic artistic purposes. The skeletal structure of Their Wedding Journey and to a lesser extent of A Chance Acquaintance is a travel itinerary with thumb¬ nail character sketches: Boston to New York, Albany, Rochester, Buffalo, Niagara Falls, Montreal, Quebec, and Boston again, the “Fast and Firm, A Romance at Marseilles,” Ashtabula Sentinel, XXXV, i (Jan. 24, 31, 1866) and A Chance Acqttaintance, pp. 199-202. “Fast and Firm” is also interesting because it follows Howells’s route into Italy and reflects his isolation and illness in Rome in 1862. For typical early Howells stories of American courtship in a country setting, see “Not a Love Story,” “A Summer Sunday in a Country Village,” “A Perfect Goose,” and “Romance of the Crossing,” Odd-Fellows Casltet, I, 222-224, 354-357, 379- 380, 443-444 (Feb., April, May, 1859). “Marriage among the Italian Priesthood,” New York Times, XV, 4 (Oct. 19, 1865). Howells’s First Novels 25 course of a trip which Howells and his wife had made in 1870. In a letter written early in 1871 to his father Howells remarked; “At last I am fairly launched upon the story of our last summer’s travels, which I am giving the form of fiction so far as the characters are concerned. ... I am going to take my people to Niagara, and then down the St. Lawrence, and so back to Boston.”^’ Venetian Life Howells had assembled, meticulously cutting and revising, from a series of “Letters from Venice” published in the Boston Advertiser; its order in large part was determined by the chronology of his observations and of serial publication.^® Italian Journeys, which first appeared in the Advertiser, the Nation, and the Atlantic Monthly, derived its form even more apparently from the sequence of his travel in Italy.^® Nor had Howells scorned the help of guide¬ books and popular histories in his traveling and writing, occasionally taking from them what interested him; he had, in fact, translated a guidebook on Venice."” What was more natural, then, for an apprentice novelist with considerable skill and repute as a writer of travel books and a flair for brief characterization than to use this skill in putting together his first long work of fiction } But Howells’s apprenticeship in travel writing had begun before he went to Venice in 1861. In the summer of 1859 he was writing pleasant rambling sketches of places and scenery and weather: a day spent at White Sulphur Springs, a visit to Camp Harrison, Co lumbus in the heat and several frosty days “In the Country” at his home in Jefferson, and in i860 an account of the editorial conven¬ tion at Tiffin.^^ Then in July the young subeditor started on “a voyage of summer sight-seeing” to visit “places of interest in Can¬ ada and New England.” His voyage, to Erie, Buffalo, Niagara Falls, Toronto, Montreal, Quebec, Portland, and Haverhill, he re¬ ported in two series of travel letters, “Glimpses of Summer Travel” for the Cincinnati Gazette and “En Passant” for his own paper, the Ohio State Journal." It is these letters which Howells comments ^’Mildred Howells (cd.), Life in Letters of William Dean Hourells (Garden City, 1928), I, 162. See item 66-A, Gibson and Arms, op. cit. See item 67-B, ibid. See item 63-C, ibid. “A Day at White Sulphur,” Ohio State foumal, XXIII, 2 (July 6, 1859); "I Visit Camp Harrison,” ibid., XXIII, 2 (Aug. 31, 1859); “Hot,” ibid., XXIII, 2 (June 29, 1859); “In the Country,” ibid., XXIII, i (June 9, 10, 11, 1859); “The Editorial Convention at Tiffin,” ibid., XXIII, 2 (Jan. 21, i860). “Glimpses of Summer Travel” Howells wrote for the Cincinnati Gazette, and the letters appeared in Vol. LXXI, July 21, 24, 27, 31, Aug. i, 6, and 9. The “En Passant”" 26 William M. Gibson on in the persons of his central characters in Their Wedding Jour¬ ney: Isabel chose [Beauport] because Basil had been there before, and it had to it the poetry of the wasted years in which she did not know him. She had possessed herself of the journal of his early travels, among the other portions and parcels recoverable from the dreadful past, and from time to time on this journey she had read him passages out of it, with mingled sentiment and irony, and, whether she was mocking or admiring, equally to his confusion. Now, as they smoothly bowled away from the city, she made him listen to what he had written of the same excursion long ago. It was, to be sure, a sad farrago of sentiment about the village and the rural sights, and especially a girl tossing hay in the field. Yet it had touches of nature and reality, and Basil could not utterly despise himself for having written it.^® Thus obliquely and yet with candor Howells acknowledged the use he made of his early travel columns in writing his first novel. But not more than a tenth of Their Wedding Journey comes from the two travel series of eleven years before, and one suspects that substantial portions of description derive either from an unpublished notebook or from Howells’s memory of the previous summer’s trip. (He acknowledges a debt to Francis Parkman for some of the his¬ torical incidents.)"^ But the earlier material is used scatteringly through the entire latter half of the novel, that is, from the de¬ scription of Buffalo on. As much as a page or a page and a half may be inserted without alteration, or with only slight change, as in the descriptions of the Indian village or the whirlpool at Niagara, of the Canadian militiaman at Lundy’s Lane, of the cathedral and tower of Notre Dame or the Convent of the Gray Nuns at Mon¬ treal.^® And as little may be selected from the early columns as letters cover somewhat different material from the same places, and were published in the Ohio State Journal, Vol. XXIV, July 23, 24, 28, 31, Aug. 4, 6, and 7. The portions of the letters not used in Their Wedding Journey are topical, or personal, or statistical, or con¬ cerned with New England industry. The descriptions of Toronto, Portland, and Haverhill are also omitted as less interesting or important. Their Wedding Journey, p. 255. The Marches were reading “En Passant,” Ohio State Journal, XXIV, i (Aug. 4, i860). Their Wedding Journey, p. 241. Howells reviewed three of Parkman’s volumes from 1869 to 1871; see items 69-5, 70-2, and 71-7, Gibson and Arms, op. cit. Compare “En Passant,” Ohio State Journal, XXIV', i (July 24, i860) and Their Wedding Journey, pp. 137-138; “En Passant” (July 28, i860) and Their Wedding Journey, pp. 162-163; “En Passant” (July 28, i860) and Their Wedding Journey, pp. 156-157; Howells’s First Novels 27 the name of the river steamer Banshee, aboard which Howells made his first trip through the St. Lawrence rapids."® The chapter on New York in the heat finds a number of parallels in the younger Howells’s work: weather was a constant subject for him."^ Many of the thumbnail characterizations are either similar to earlier sketches or are directly expanded from the short character delinea¬ tions of “Glimpses of Summer Travel” and “En Passant.” The Marches’ fancied poet of Their Wedding Journey resembles How¬ ells’s objective, mildly satirical self-portrait as the poet of the edi¬ torial convention at Tiffin, and the flirtatious young man “of second or third quality” in the same novel is very much like “Dick Dowdy,” the subject of an early sketch."® Because he felt the same way about the studied hauteur and indifference of hotel clerks in i860 and in 1871, Howells re-used his early portrait of one such “noble and august creature.”"® Isabel March is disappointed at her first glimpse of Niagara just as Howells himself had been.®® The brides on the rocks and the new-wedded lovers at Goat Island; the old gentleman skipping over the slippery stones at the foot of Ter¬ rapin Tower who could not fall because a phrenologist had told him that his equilibrium bump was phenomenally developed; the “actress” who warbles a song as the Banshee traverses the rapids; the French boy in the cathedral and the pale young priest in the country church; the decorated private soldier of the Quebec citadel —all reappear in the novel.®^ “Glimpses of Summer Travel,” Cincinnati Gazette, LXXI, i (July 31, i860), ibid. (Aug. i, i860) and Their Wedding ]ourney, pp. 198-199; “Glimpses of Summer Travel,” Cincinnati Gazette, LXXI, i (July 31, i860) and Their Wedding Journey, pp. 204-207. Many other brief borrowings or paraphrases are to be found. The Convent of the Gray Nuns in Mon¬ treal figures largely in A Chance Acquaintance, as background. Compare “En Passant,” Ohio State Journal, XXIV, i (July 28, i860) and Their Wedding Journey, p. 182. “’'Compare Their Wedding Journey, pp. 35-55 with “Our Emended Edition of Shake¬ speare,” Ashtabula Sentinel, XXIII, 2 (Aug. 24, 1854) and “Hot,” Ohio State Journal, XXIII, 2 (June 29, 1859). ““Compare Their Wedding Journey, pp. 69-70 and “The Editorial Convention at Tif¬ fin,” Ohio State Journal, XXIII, 2 (Jan. 21, i860). The “fancied poet” of Their Wedding Journey closely resembles Howells in other respects. Compare Their Wedding Journey, pp. 65-66 and “Dick Dowdy, Study of a First-Rate Fellow,” Ohio State Journal, XXII, 2 (Dec. 6, 1858). ““Compare Their Wedding Journey, pp. 56, 98, 269 with “Glimpses of Summer Travel,” Cincinnati Gazette, LXXI, i (July 27, i860). ““Compare Their Wedding Journey, p. 122 and “En Passant,” Ohio State Journal, XXIV, I (July 24, i860). ““Compare Their Wedding Journey, pp. 124-125 and “Glimpses of Summer Travel,” Cincinnati Gazette, LXXI, i (July 24, i860); Their Wedding Journey, pp. 143-144 and 28 William M. Gibson Their Wedding Journey, however limited it may be as a work of fiction, is of a piece and is fiction. In the novel, hotel clerk, old gentleman, actress, Canadian Army private, French boy, and young priest all come to life with dialogue (the last two now speaking in English rather than French), and they all speak in relation to Basil and Isabel March. By the simple measure of taking a no-longer- young married couple on a delayed honeymoon, Howells secured a device for easy, low-keyed dramatization through dialogue and comment and difference of opinion, and a central point of view. He also introduced minor conflicts and actions: a man suffers heat exhaustion on Broadway, the honeymooners quarrel briefly, the New York to Albany night steamer runs down a small boat.®^ And the Marches witness or take some part in these events. In fine, his three early novels (and some of the later ones on occasion) incorporated ideas and incidents which Howells had worked out embryonically in his varied, numerous early writings. And in Their Wedding Journey, his observations refreshed by a re¬ cent trip over much of the same route, he simply presented a modi¬ cum of his early “journal” of American and Canadian travel through the consciousness of a married couple created in his newer fictional vein of courtship and marriage. Howells’s justification for such a simple formula in writing a novel is, of course, to be found in the novel itself. He asserted, “As in literature the true artist will shun the use even of real events if they are of an improbable character, so the sincere observer of man will not desire to look upon his heroic or occasional phases, but will seek his habitual moods of vacancy and tiresomeness.”^^ An admirer of the loosely linked picaresque novel and a passionate, habitual observer of place and people, Howells admitted distrust, moreover, of his “fitness for a sustained or involved narration” on the first page of his book. Their “Glimpses of Summer Travel,” Cincinnati Gazette, LXXI, i (July 24, i860) and “En Passant," Ohio State Journal, XXIV, i (July 24, i860); Their Wedding Journey, pp. 150- 152 and “En Passant,” Ohio State Journal, XXIV, i (July 24, i860); Their Wedding Journey, pp. 193-194 and “Glimpses of Summer Travel,” Cincinnati Gazette, LXXI, i (July 31, i860), “En Passant,” Ohio State Journal, XXIV, i (July 28, i860); Their Wed¬ ding Journey, p. 199 and “Glimpses of Summer Travel,” Cincinnati Gazette, LXXI, i (July 31, i860); Their Wedding Journey, pp. 214-216 and “Glimpses of Summer Travel,” Cincinnati Gazette, LXXI, i (Aug. i, i860); Their Wedding Journey, pp. 235-236 and “Glimpses of Summer Travel,” Cincinnati Gazette, LXXI, i (Aug. 6, i860), “En Passant,” Ohio State Journal, XXIV, i (.^ug. 4, i860). Their Wedding Journey, pp. 51-53, 72-77, 208-212. Their Wedding Journey, pp. 86-87. Howells’s First Novels 29 Wedding Journey and A Chance Acquaintance, one does not for¬ get, possess virtues of humor and lucid style, and sensitive percep¬ tions of “ordinary traits of American life.”^^ But not until he could write Indian Summer, A Modern Instance, The Landlord at Lion's Head, and A Hazard of Neu/ Fortunes would Howells leave be¬ hind the travel formula and strict construction of his literary theory, and create complex mature character and moving conflict in sus¬ tained, well-knit novels. Ibid., p. 2. The Equalitarian Principle in the Fiction of William Dean Howells William F. Ekstrom I O NE OF THE MOST CURIOUS ASPECTS of Howells’s fiction is his insistence upon carrying the equalitarian prin¬ ciple to its ultimate refinement, or, as some might have it, its final absurdity. This equalitarian ideal is of interest not only because it reveals the social criticism of Howells but also because it sheds light on Howells’s fictional characterizations. The basic motiva¬ tions in the novels, which have often been imperfectly understood, become abundantly clear. Moreover, the ideal persisted long after Howells’s active interest in social reform had ebbed. It persisted be¬ cause it was the embodiment in the social structure of a drive which he took to be fundamental in human experience. There has, of course, been a moderate interest in Howells’s so¬ cial criticism, but much of it has stopped with the simple classifica¬ tion of Howells as a socialist and the assumption that his social views were those of the Fabian group for whom he demonstrated un¬ mistakable sympathy in the waning years of the nineteenth century. It has been further assumed that these social views were a passing phase which Howells outgrew as he settled down to a comfortable old age amid the applause of the traditional and conservative ele¬ ments of American society. There can be no doubt that Howells’s interest in social reform became mild indeed after 1895 and finally spent itself in a brief flurry of anti-imperialism. But this is not necessarily an indication that Howells changed his mind about the kind of society he wanted. It is rather, I believe, evidence that he had come to despair of even an approach to the achievement of his ideal. Anyone who studies his utopian social criticism as revealed in A Traveler from Altruria and its sequel, T hrough the Eye of the Needle, will be impressed by the futility from his point of view of the muckraking progressivism of the following era. Drives to clean up municipal governments The Equalitarian Principle in Howells 31 did not enlist his active interest, and anti-trust laws to retard the development of monopolies were to him an effort to hold back the trend toward concentration of economic power which was necessary to bring about the future utopia/ It should not be forgotten that Through the Eye of the Needle appeared in 1907, though largely written long before, and that in that utopia, given to the public twelve years after his interest in social criticism was supposed to have spent itself, he reaffirms his social and economic creed. The introduction, which he appends at the time, is both wistful and pathetic. It reveals a disillusioned idealist clinging to his utopia with scarcely the remotest hope of its accomplishment. It is evident in this utopian romance that he wanted a society patterned after the ideal of craftsmanship and fellowship in the utopian thought of William Morris. It was the antithesis of in¬ dustrialism. Unlike the Marxists, who hoped to use industrial technocracy for the greater glory and comfort of the proletariat, he wanted to get rid of slavery to the machine and bring about a society where beauty and pleasure and creative skill were the central features of man’s work. In other words, he sought to halt the divorce of art and work and to imbue all artisans with the artistic spirit so that man’s everyday toil could become meaningful and pleasurable. This in itself, of course, required changes more radical than those of any other contemporary American social critic, but Howells went even deeper. He sought an equality among men which was more nearly absolute than one can find in any other professedly serious study of American society at that time. He deplored the absence of any real social equality in American life. In speaking of such equality in A Traveler from Altruria, he commented: . . . [I]t never existed, except in our poorest and most primitive com¬ munities, in the pioneer days of the West, and among the gold-hunters of California. It was not dreamt of in our colonial society, either in Vir¬ ginia, or Pennsylvania, or New York, or Massachusetts; and the fathers of the republic, who were mostly slaveholders, were practically as stiff¬ necked aristocrats as any people of their day. We have not a political aristocracy, that is all; but there is as little love, in this country as in any country on the globe. The severance of the man who works for his ^ A Traveler from Altruria (New York, 1894), pp. 271 II. 32 William F. Ekstxom living with his hands from the man who does not work for his Uving with his hands is so complete, and apparently so final, that nobody even imagines anything else, not even in fiction.^ In Howells’s utopian vision, our much-talked-of political equal¬ ity was taken as a matter of course. The political arrangements called for a nearly pure democracy; the verdicts of the magistrates were confirmed by a standing vote of the people.® To be sure, the principle of absolute equality had to be enforced. Sanctions largely took the form of social pressure and natural remorse for wrong¬ doing,^ but when extreme measures were necessary, Howells re¬ luctantly permitted the use of flexible steel nets and mild electric shock to remind such recalcitrant wrongdoers as the shipwrecked American sailors that the patience of good fellowship could at length be exhausted.® His utopian arrangements end with the nation-state, which, to¬ gether with its dependent neighbors, constitutes an economic unit detached by broad expanses of ocean from the rest of mankind.® Unlike Morris, his utopian model, he makes no provision for an international fellowship, but avoids the question of universal equality by cutting his Altrurians off from the contaminating influences of the outside world.^ Clearly, Howells cherished the isolationist dream of his fellow Americans. The equality which Howells advocates, however, is more drastic than his rather shadowy provisions for a fully democratic form of government. He was interested in a much more exacting form of social and economic equality, and he was interested in it not be¬ cause of humanitarian sentiment but because of the moral and psychological effect it would produce.® II Howells pointed out emphatically, as did Morris before him, that inequality not only brutalizes the lower classes but also narrows and vulgarizes the upper.® Nor is anything accomplished in his view by the attempts at charity: the poor are further pauperized; the 'Ibid., p. 62. See also p. 221. 'Through the Eye oj the Needle (New York, 1907), p. 148. * Ibid., pp. 138, 166. 'Ibid., p. 197. * A Traveler from Altruria, pp. 288, 299. ^ Ibid., pp. 288-289. 'Ibid., pp. 3, 10, 17-22. * The theme of Annie Kilbum. The Equalitarian Principle in Howells 33 rich neither increase their pleasure nor widen their fellowship. As a matter of fact, it is only the poor in America who are capable of the self-sacrifice and mutual help which constitute real charity.^” For no wealthy person, as Howells’s Mrs. Strange points out, really intends to make sacrifices which will endanger his own economic position: “That is what makes it so hopeless. We \now that Christ was per- fecdy right, and that He was perfectly sincere in what He said to the good young millionaire; but we all go away exceeding sorrowful, just as the good young millionaire did. We have to, if we don’t want to come on charity ourselves.”^^ We seem to be haunted in this passage by the words of Morris’s prophet, John Ball: “Forsooth, in the belly of every rich man dwell- eth a devil of hell.”^^ The fate of the prosperous lord and the wealthy abbot of medieval England apparently had its modern coun¬ terpart in Howells’s conception of the plutocrats of nineteenth- century America.^® The solution, of course, from Howells’s point of view, was a genuine equality, for without it there was no meaning in the funda¬ mental ideal of liberty itself: We must somehow be equals in opportunity and in safety or we can¬ not be free. This equality is the logic of liberty, and liberty cannot stop short of it without ceasing to be. It can confer no lasting good, no final blessing, until it has been exchanged for such equality; and to effect this exchange is the supreme office of hberty, as self-sacrifice is its supreme manifestation.^'* Howells takes his ideal of equality from society, for society with all its vulgar snobbery toward other classes is an expression of equality within itself. “You can have no pleasure of the man you look up to, or the man you look down on; the thing is impossible. Your soul is always seeking the level of your companion’s . . . Classes arise to satisfy the need for equality even within a limited Traveler from Altruria, p. 126. Through the Eye of the Needle, pp. 89-90. A Dream of John Ball, p. 234 in the Collected Worh_s. ** Through the Eye of the Needle, pp. 203-204. “The Nature of Liberty,” Forum, XX, 409 (Dec., 1895). “Equality as the Basis of Good Society,” Century, LI, 63 (Nov., 1895). 34 William F. Ekstrom group, for real fellowship can arise only among equals. True so¬ ciety is an expression of comradeship and consideration for others and “as nearly as we can conceive it or forecast it, the new condi¬ tion, the equality of the future, will be the enlargement of good society to the whole of humanity.”^® Actual equality was pretty rigidly practiced in Howells’s Al- truria. Cooks and waitresses sat down at the table with those whom they served, much to the horror of that particular world which Howells delighted to satirize.^^ No social disgrace attached to any honest labor, and all, of course, shared in the three hours of oblig¬ atory work. The shipwrecked millionaires in Through the Eye of the Needle —Mrs. Thrall at her housework, her husband in the garden, and Lord Moors at the road-building—were all relieved of the distinctions based on bank balances and gilt-edged securities, and made to pay their way in the coin of Altruria, by the sweat of their brows.^® Each man dwelt in the place assigned, which was neither better nor worse than that of others and each had a right to his share of food, light, heat, and raiment.^® No amount of work in the voluntaries gave a man a right to more than his share of the necessaries of life, and since there was no money, all purchasing power was extinct.^ “No man owned anything, but every man had the right to anything that he could use; when he could not use it, his right lapsed.”^^ But it was in his arrangements for social life that Howells re¬ veals the full measure of his radicalism and the underlying motive power in so much of his characterization. Not content with political and economic leveling, he sought a social fellowship where no man would be given a sense of inferiority by exclusion. People rarely met in Altruria by special invitation or previous engagement, and there was no pretension that any such special assemblage when it did occur conferred any particular social distinction.^^ In fact, the Altrurian commented: “. . . these occasions are rather avoided, recalling as they do the vapid and tedious entertainments of the competitive epoch, the receptions and Ibid., p. 67. Through the Eye of the Needle, p. 153. Ibid., pp. 223-224. Traveler pom Altruria, p. 305. ““ Ibid., pp. 305-306. ” Ibid. ““ Ibid., p. 309. The Equalitarian Principle in Howells 35 balls and dinners of a semi-barbaric people striving for social prominence by shutting a certain number in and a certain number out, and over¬ dressing, overfeeding and overdrinking.”^^ It was natural that Howells should have been preoccupied with the effect of equality on social niceties, for he was undoubtedly thinking of his own Coreys and Hillarys and Hallecks as he wrote. He had described scores of such social occasions in his novels, not all of them vapid and tedious, but in nearly all some highly sensi¬ tive personality is hurt, subtly perhaps, but none the less deeply and permanently. Such wounds of social frustration are central in the thinking of Howells. The social equality which he advocates as a panacea is precisely the same equality as that of Morris—a co-operative participation in pleasurable work, an equal access to consumers’ goods, and absence of motive or opportunity to hoard property, and a communal shar¬ ing of culture and fellowship—but he was absorbed beyond that with the fine shades of distinction which the most elementary society could set up—the subtle exclusions which could be enforced even in a supposedly classless society, and the resultant wounds to the psyche from a sense of not really belonging to the community fellow¬ ship. Ill Clearly, Howells’s concept of equality involved a kind of uni¬ versal fellowship, the antithesis of individualism in its usual Ameri¬ can sense. Here indeed is the key to Howells’s whole range of char¬ acterization not only of the Northwicks and Dryfooses, the Pecks and Dentons of his economic novels, but almost equally of the Hub¬ bards and Laphams of the earlier period and the Durgins and Lang- briths of the later. In novel after novel there is the sense of per¬ sonal isolation, of a tragic failure in communication between human beings. It is perhaps expressed most succinctly in The Minister s Charge: “If I could only have got near the poor boy,” said Sewall to his wife as they returned within doors. “If I could only have reached him where he lives, as our slang says! But do what I would, I couldn’t find any Ibid. Clearly, Howells enjoyed satirizing “good society” at the same time that he used it as a kind of model. 36 William F. Ekstrom common ground where we could stand together. We were as unlike as if we were of two different species. I saw that everything I said be¬ wildered him more and more; he couldn’t understand me! Our educa¬ tion is unchristian, our civilization is pagan. They both ought to bring us in closer relations with our fellow-creatures, and they both only put us more widely apart! Every one of us dwells in an impenetrable soli¬ tude! We understand each other a little if our circumstances are similar, but if they are different all our words leave us dumb and unintelligible.”^'^ The poignancy of this isolation is often missed, for Howells, with his mildness and restraint, refuses to dramatize the tragedy. He frequently inserts a spokesman character who is reaching out for an understanding of the protagonist. From this point of view human behavior can be viewed at an emotional remove, and the hero becomes an eccentric and a grotesque. Such is the relationship of Sewall to Barker, of March to the Dryfooses, of Westfall to Durgin, of the Kentons to their children, of Anther to Langbrith. As in James the perspective is all important, but Howells is scarcely interested in impressionism for its own sake. It is not the reality of the impression but the inevitable falseness of it which intrigues him. Temperamentally Howells is inclined to Jane Austen’s com¬ edy of errors—a series of misconceptions resulting in errors of judg¬ ment and conduct which cease only with the unmasking of true character at the end of the novel. But Howells can never accept such a final revelation. Communication is never that successful or that complete. The awful loneliness of the individual is, of course, a universal theme, and in American literature had been expressed much more forcefully by Hawthorne and Melville. But Howells directs it into a somewhat different channel when he links it to the idea of equality. There is a cultural determinism in his concept which gives small scope to the individual. The individual in Howells has little control over his destiny in a world of chance; he is an island of self-regard in an endless expanse of hostile and contending inter¬ ests. Those who talk overmuch of the “smiling aspects” in How¬ ells have usually gone little beyond the exceptional character of Lapham, who, though overwhelmed by hostile fate, manages to re¬ tain his integrity. Normally, the determinism is more insistent. “P. 37. The Equalitarian Principle in Howells 37 One suspects that the real quarrel which the naturalists had with Howells was certainly not that he portrayed a smiling, optimistic universe. Nor could they object fundamentally to his refusal to dramatize the tragedy of man’s fate, though they doubtless would have looked upon him with greater complacency if he had. They parted company with him because of his failure to root his de¬ terminism in biological necessity. It is not the arrested drive for power, sexual frustration, or even economic insecurity that consti¬ tutes the final tragedy in Howells. It is rather that our civilization, the structure of our society, eternally excludes man from some form of human fellowship. But if this apparent sense of evil in institu¬ tions sounds like a belated echo of Jean Jacques, it should be pointed out that it is fellowship, not freedom that man seeks for fulfilment; hence institutions are not evil entities oppressing man from without, but are rather the way in,which men have become related to one another and are, for good or for evil, the very essence of human ex¬ perience. The goal, then, is an almost Whitman-like passion for universal brotherhood, but it is stripped alike of transcendental mysti¬ cism and biological metaphor. It is generalized in the utopian ro¬ mances, but in novel after novel, it is implicit in everyday experi¬ ence. It follows, from this point of view, that the hope of mankind, if there is such a hope—and Howells wavers between the determin¬ ism of A World of Chance and his utopian vision—necessarily lies in so ordering the social structure as to reduce the awful loneliness of man in an egocentric society. The image of this fellowship is to be found in the extension of the idealized family relationship. In Howells’s Altruria, the family ties are in no way inimical to the interests of others and have no tendency to circumscribe the universal fellowship. As a matter of fact, although families were permitted to live apart, they seldom did. Communal eating and communal house¬ keeping were the rule.^® The whole spirit of the community was a development of the best elements of American village life in terms of neighborliness and mutual aid. The impulse not only to stand by in times of trial and crisis, but to join together in harvesting the Through the Eye of the Needle, p. 179; A Traveler from Altruria, p. 294. 38 William F. Ekstrom crop and in building a neighbor’s house gave evidence of a fellow¬ ship which had been little known in the Western world outside the somewhat idealized American frontier.^® It was this eagerness of the Altrurian to participate in all manner of work and to enter into friendly and sympathetic relations with his fellows regardless of station which made him such a strange anomaly at a New England summer resort. It was not only that he horrified his host by lifting trunks for the porter and polishing shoes for the bootblack or that he bowed to the chambermaid and shook hands with the headwaiter/^ but that he persisted in this conduct and refused to see anything wrong in it long after the indecency and impropriety of it had been pointed out to him beyond the remotest possibility of misunderstanding. The Altrurians in their own country, of course, were interested in all manner of strangers and extended to them a most sincere and tactful hospitality without regard to any kind of distinction.^® Their notion of comradeship extended beyond the family and beyond the community to the universal brotherhood of Christianity: [Just] as the image of equality is now to be found only in good society where all are theoretically peers, so the image of fraternity is to be found only in the family which ... is really bound together ... by love and help and gratitude.^ IV Such was the utopian ideal of Howells. It is a reflection of temperament, of something in his own character which made for a distinctive attitude toward equality. This something is an easily de¬ tected quality which critics have sometimes reckoned a virtue and sometimes a vice. On the one hand, it was tenderness, sympathy, understanding, artistic sensitivity; on the other, it was squeamish¬ ness, oversensitiveness, fastidiousness, prudery. It made him a real¬ ist but limited his realism; it converted him to socialism but rendered it impossible for him to be militant. Because of these lim¬ itations, it has been fashionable to think of Howells as something like a timid and squeamish old spinster who delights in the sensa- Traveler from Altruria, pp. i6o, 185. Ibid., pp. 3, 10, 122-125, 235. T hrough the Eye of the Needle, p. 159. ^'‘Century, LI, 933 (April, 1896). The Equalitarian Principle in Howells 39 tion of an occasional mild expletive, but who would swoon at the sound of real profanity. Now squeamish Howells most certainly was, but timid he quite as emphatically was not. To remain friendly with the inner circles of Brahmin Boston and yet fight the battles of Tolstoy and Morris required a daily fortification of the spirit; it represented moral courage of a kind which was not always apparent to the new generation brought up in the freer atmosphere that How¬ ells himself had played a distinguished part in creating. But Howells did have a passionate desire to see life neat and clean and happy and well ordered. The ugly and the grotesque, in social life as in art, and the painful sense of inferiority and social slight—these disturbed him deeply. Hence his lack of rapport with critics, like Gronlund and Bellamy, whose notions of equality were mechanical and coldly economic. Hence his delight with the idea of communal fellowship in William Morris. But even Morris’s equality based on the cooperative enterprise of craftsmanship did not completely satisfy the realistic novelist in Howells. Morris took it for granted that his Utopians, once they had got rid of the hoary European traditions of caste and were engaged in creative work, would inevitably have an equal dignity, but Howells, true to his American background, was more keenly sensitive to the slightest hint of social distinction. He well knew that the elimination of traditional class lines did not guarantee equality. Consequently, he would take no chances on the development of any kind of ex¬ clusive group which might become the symbol of class distinction, however slight. It was Howells’s preoccupation with Boston and New York society which made him so sensitive to social stratification. One constantly has the feeling that it is not so much the plight of the small farmer or the city workingman that he has in mind, but the status of the domestic servant. And yet the domestic servant was simply an extreme, an obvious, an easily dramatized example of the wounds suffered by all men in a certain measure. His long and shrewd appraisal of the American scene had taught him that inequality can be enforced in society by a process so subtle that its victims are only dimly aware of the ruthless method which effects the frustration of their most cherished hopes. 40 William F. Ekstrom Howells himself had known the bitterness of not quite belong¬ ing, and so in their different ways had many of his friends, including Mark Twain and Henry James. It was not simply a matter of economic stratification. The significance of Howells’s utopian thought is that he believed he saw in the current social criticism, in the furor over the Henry Georges, the Gronlunds, and the Bellamys, a chance to reorganize society so as to avoid all forms of exclusion. The elimination of formal social events, of all forms of association which called for select inivitation and previous en¬ gagement went beyond the most radical contemporary thought. In that kind of society, Lapham could have risen with impunity; Annie Kilburn need never have failed. At such fantastic changes the realist well may smile. Even if man could actually be released from economic pressure and social obligation as in Altruria, he would surely seek a new fellowship among those of like interests and congenial temperament. His associations might well be more fortunate, but there would still inevitably be a “we” group and a “they” group in society. The kind of universal compatibility and every-neighbor-a-friend type of equality which Howells suggests is ultimately absurd. / And yet what absolute goal is not? Howells’s real contribution to social thought was his insistence that the notion of equality is a rationalization of man’s drive for fellowship, for community ac¬ ceptance, for social fulfilment. In the last analysis, Howells was not interested primarily in devising political and economic panaceas, but in suggesting that in so far as happiness is possible in this world, it is possible only in the measure that society can eliminate rude¬ ness, unkindness, and snobbishness—all that sears in man’s relation¬ ship to man.^” Century, LI, 67 (Nov., 1895). Howells, the Atlantic Monthly^ and Republicanism Louis J. Budd I T he ATLANTIC MONTHLY has won an impregnable niche in the history of American literature. Emerson, Lowell, Holmes, Whittier, and other New England masters supported it with a proprietary fondness, and for several decades after its found¬ ing in 1857 it clearly purveyed a meatier diet of poetry, fiction, and criticism than did any other native periodical. However, interest in nineteenth-century belles-lettres has obscured the early Atlantic’s true character as a well-balanced magazine which responded to major ideas and current problems and which actively participated in national politics. Similarly, William Dean Howells has been classified as a novelist and literary critic who completed his artistic apprenticeship while editing the Atlantic, yet Howells carried on its tradition of handling intelligently not only aesthetic but also social subjects. Examination of the Atlantic’s political life during his edi¬ torship will readjust our perspective on this famous periodical and on one of our most important men of letters. The contents of the early Atlantic were, of course, chiefly liter¬ ary. Still, from its birth aligned with the rising Republican party through both editors and owners, it devoted substantial attention to contemporary affairs; James Russell Lowell, the first editor, penned political polemics for this new organ of “Literature, Art, and Politics.” During the i86o’s James T. Fields, moving with the main trend, further widened the periodical’s coverage, and after the Civil War had enshrined the Republican party m the hearts of the New England intelligentsia. The Atlantic favored openly the tri¬ umphant antislavery legions of Lincoln, Grant, and Charles Sumner. To distinguish between Fields’s and Howells’s influence from 1866 to 1871, the year when Howells assumed formal editorship, must depend on tenuous conjecture; it is sufficient to recognize that How- 42 Louis J. Budd ells found on his hands a political as well as literary journal. He always remembered that the Atlantic’s constituency included many “thoughtful and responsible Republicans.”^ Indeed, Howells’s record as a capable Republican partisan may have outweighed his proofreading skill in eliciting the offer of an assistant editorship in 1866. When the young Ohioan sought a berth with the New York World in 1861 he recommended himself by stating, “I have journalized for four or five years, and know some¬ thing of political and other writing.”^ This self-description cannot be wholly discounted as puffery from an aspiring job-seeker. William Cooper Howells, the novelist’s father, had published in succession Owenite, Whig, Free Soil, Republican, and Radical Re¬ publican newspapers; the son was early pressed into service as type¬ setter and by 1856, when nineteen years old, occasionally editorialized in his father’s antislavery Ashtabula Sentinel. In 1857 and 1858 he sent off violently partisan newsletters detailing the doings of the Ohio state legislature for the Republican Cincinnati Gazette, and autumn of 1858 brought a subordinate position—which lasted into 1861—on the Columbus voice of the bustling Republican party, the Ohio State Journal. Also, Howells in i860 produced a campaign biography of Lincoln which won for him the Venice consulship. After the war the repatriate attached himself to the newly founded Nation, and although his weekly “Minor Topics” were familiar essays on contemporary morals and mores, he allowed him¬ self in his column—and in further letters to the Cincinnati Gazette — political commentary which jibed with E. L. Godkin’s pro-freedmen aims. This less literary side must have enhanced his value in Fields’s eyes and, in turn, the young man’s alliance with the Atlantic engendered political as well as aesthetic and personal satisfactions. As early as 1867, when Howells heard that his old Columbus friend, James M. Comly, was being boomed as the Republican nominee for governor of Ohio, he could offer, “If the Atlantic Monthly can help ’ E. P. Oberholtzer, A History of the United States since the Civil War (New York, 1937)1 58- See also Frank L. Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1850-1865 (Cambridge, 1938), pp. 499-501, for the importance of political ideas during the first few years of the Atlantic’s career; its various owners were all good Republicans. “ Laura Stedman and G. M. Gould, Life and Letters of E. C. Stedman (New York, 1910), I, 248. Howells and Republicanism 43 you in any way, command it.”^ Eulogizing George William Curtis, Howells in 1868 denied that literary men erred in “espousing poli¬ tics,” for the gifted could not be “better employed than in teaching men self-government.”^ In every way, the man and the job were well met when Howells joined the staff of the Atlantic. II The Atlantic’s loyalties in the post-Civil-War decades erupted most obviously during national elections. A supporter of Lincoln in i860 and 1864, Howells, like his father, had lined up with the Radicals after 1865 and had joined in abusing Andrew Johnson. Early in the campaign of 1868 the assistant editor of the Atlantic staunchly backed Ulysses S. Grant’s candidacy. Praising the little general even before his official nomination, Howells reminded the public that Reconstruction was the key issue and assured it that Grant would implement the Radical plan for rebuilding the South “upon the basis of equal rights for every race and color.”® As for the Republican party, he continued, “It may be divided and beaten, but in the end it must be the triumphing majority, for it is the reason and the heart of the people.” When Grant’s campaign was nearing its victorious end, Howells in reviewing a campaign biog¬ raphy thrust at whispers about the candidate’s fondness for alcohol by asserting that if the “taking of strong waters breeds so much good sense, energy, modesty, and correct principle in prospective Presidents, we hope the coming man of the people will always drink wine—to excess.”® Since Howells himself drank little “strong waters,” we can regard this rebuttal as shameless oratory; excited enough to risk such extremes, he must have been delighted with the wide Republican majority. On May 6, 1871, Godkin reported of Howells, immediately after they had breakfasted together, “He talks despondently like every- ® Letter to Comly, April 13, 1867, in Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Museum and Library. Thanks are due to the University of Kentucky Research Fund Committee for financial aid which enabled me to travel to Columbus, Ohio, and Cambridge, Mass. ‘“George William Curtis,” North American Review, CVII, 114 (July, 1868). '“The Next President,” Atlantic, XXI, 628 (May, 1868). This article and most other Atlantic items by Howells were unsigned, but attribution has been made in The Atlantic Index, i8sy-i888 (Boston and New York, 1889). W. M. Gibson and G. W. Arms in their excellent Bibliography of W. D. Howells (New York, 1948) accept these items without question. 'XXII, 638 (Nov., 1868). 44 Louis J. Budd body else about the condition of morals and manners.”* Uneasiness over prolonged Radical control of the defeated South, over the spoils system and political corruption, and over the war-born protective tariff had been stinging forward-looking Republicans like Godkin, William Cullen Bryant, Samuel Bowles, and Carl Schurz. Just before the Liberal Republican Convention of 1872, writing in the new monthly department of the May Atlantic entitled “Politics,” Arthur G. Sedgwick had attacked Grant on many counts.® After the rump gathering had by-passed Charles Francis Adams to settle upon Horace Greeley, Howells referred to himself as one of the “original Cincinnati Convention men, who expected something more than a division of the party from that body.”® Clearly, he had hoped the Cincinnati reformers would agree on a liberal who could be forced upon the regular Republican conclave as the best instrument for recouping prestige losses suffered during Grantism. Whatever leanings he felt toward Liberal Republicanism were completely rectified by the naming of Greeley, the New York tribune s erratic editor whose fame hung equally on respect for his abilities and ridicule of his many idiosyncrasies. When Thomas Bailey Aldrich and Howells composed sixteen numbers of Jubilee Days, a daily record of the peace celebration held in Boston during the summer of 1872, they seized Greeley as their favorite butt for the jokes which filled out the columns. Furthermore, like most free-traders, Howells insisted that he must “totally object” to Gree¬ ley’s protectionist ideas. Greeley’s unacceptability increased again when he received the Democratic blessing; to Howells, voting in concert with “unrepentant but reconciled rebel leaders who tried to destroy us as a people” was still unthinkable.^® On the other hand, xe-election of Grant had been partly offset by naming as his running mate Henry Wilson, a reputable statesman and historian from ’’ Letter to C. E. Norton in Life and Letter's of Godl^in, ed. Rollo Ogden (New York, *907). I. 307- ®This department began in Jan., 1872, and ran until Dec., 1873. Sedgwick, a brother- in-law of C. E. Norton, was a friend of Howclls’s; see Life in Letters of Howells, cd. Mildred Howells (Garden City, 1928), I, 133, 137. Howells obviously knew Sedgwick’s political opinions before arranging for the latter’s essays, which ran for the first part of 1872 and for all of 1873. ““Politics,” Atlantic, XXX, 128 (July, 1872). “Politics,” XXX, 128, 638 (July, Nov., 1872). Howells and Republicanism 45 Massachusetts who ranked high with the Atlantic coterie.^^ Despite rumblings of discontent, New England independents and intellec¬ tuals like Lowell and Longfellow generally clung to the Repub¬ lican fold in 1872, At first Howells refused to aid wholeheartedly in swelling the torrential insult poured on Greeley, who had been very popular in the 1850’s with young Howells’s neighbors in the Western Reserve and who had accumulated a passable Republican record. But the Atlantic had been committed to Grant and Wilson. Samuel R. Reed, Howells’s former colleague on the Ohio State Journal, and Frank B. Sanborn, who shared the authorship of “Politics” for the remainder of 1872 except for another essay in November by How¬ ells, bolstered up the cause of regular Republicanism embraced by the editor in July.^^ Then just before the balloting, Howells slashed bitterly at the Democratic entry. Acknowledging that in the “pres¬ ent shabby Presidential contest” Grant ranked no higher than the “minor evil,” he accused Greeley of so “lacking gravity and de¬ corum” as to lead Americans to “forget the vulgarity of Johnson.”^^ Grumble as he might about the rotting of national morals, Howells walked well within party bounds during the 1870’s, emblazoning his adherence upon the magazine whose full direction he assumed in 1871. In concurrent state elections he underscored his allegiance by sneering at the mercurial General Ben Butler, and the Atlantic’s columns were utilized in somewhat frantically beating back Butler’s strong bids in 1871 and 1873 for the Republican gubernatorial nomi¬ nation in Massachusetts.^ Howells supported the entrenched fac¬ tion against the former Democrat who always managed to beguile less-educated voters. In accepting “Warrington’s” anti-Butler tirade, he pontificated: “. . . we wish to show that it was the decency, self- See Wilson’s “New Departure of the Republican Party,” Atlantic, XXVII, 104-120 (Jan., 1871). Howells had been quite friendly with Sanborn for several years. See an unpub¬ lished letter to Sanborn, dated July 3, 1872, in the Howells Collection in the library of Rutgers University, for his praise of Sanborn’s political articles. '’XXX, 640 (Nov., 1872). The single issue of the North American Ret/iew which Howells edited called for Grant’s re-election; “The Political Campaign of 1872,” CXV, 401-422 (Oct., 1872); the article is unsigned but Howells’s authorship is unlikely on stylistic grounds. “See “Warrington” [W. S. Robinson], “General Butler’s Campaign in Massachusetts,” XXMII, 742-750 (Dec., 1871), and [A. G. Sedgwick], “Politics,” XXXII, 255, 640 (Aug., Nov., 1873). 46 Louis J. Budd respect and sense of the community, in which he [Butler] disbe¬ lieved, that overthrew him. We want to discourage demagogues everywhere, through his failure.”^” Although in the 1850’s How¬ ells had publicized the Republican party as the bastion of those who defied the Fugitive Slave Law, he now stood with the forces of respectabilit y, decorum, and law ful process. Any tendency to swerve politically disappeared in 1876, the candidacy of Rutherford B. Hayes signaling a modest victory for the liberals. Also, Mrs. Howells was Hayes’s first cousin once re¬ moved; with their families on friendly terms, the two men regarded each other with mutual admiration. Spurred by a happy fusion of political idealism and hope of financial profit, Howells sprang eagerly to writing, with the nominee’s full co-operation, his S\etch of the Life and Character of Rutherford B. Hayes. This campaign biography, much more convincing than his similar treatment of Lincoln, showed how enthusiastically he served his party; the author waved somewhat insincerely, as will be seen, the “bloody shirt” of sectional animosity, heartily approved Hayes’s demand for resuming specie payment in gold, and promised purification of the civil serv¬ ice. In the “Preface” he assured voters that he had written “with¬ out restriction and without instruction,” although actually he had heeded Hayes’s private warning to avoid religion, temperance, and free trade.^® Having indulged in some mild political deceit on Hayes’s behalf, Howells followed the contested election anxiously and was elated by the final outcome. In A Modern Instance (1882), the amoral Bartley Hubbard bet on Samuel Tilden while honest Ben Halleck naturally backed Hayes. During Hayes’s administration Howells reached his peak as a staunch Republican regular, and even furnished the president-elect with a canny analysis of several Boston politicians which he was happy to get.^^ The Atlantic “Contributor’s Club” pointed out that “we cannot do without the parties any more than we can dispense Letter to W. S. Robinson, Oct. 22, 1871, in Yale University Library. See letter from Hayes to Howells, Aug. 24, 1876, in the Howells Collection in the Houghton Library of Harvard University. The novelist’s brother, Joseph, was chairman of the Ashtabula County Republican Central Committee for 1876. See letter from Howells to Hayes, Feb. 19, 1877, and from Hayes to Howells, Feb. 27, 1877. Prof. Edwin H. Cady has discovered and graciously transcribed for me these letters as well as the Howells-Garfield correspondence in the Library of Congress. Howells and Republicanism 47 with the trees” on the American scene/® No support for Hayes appeared in the Atlantic in 1876, but the editor had seemingly solicited such an essay from Carl Schurz; however, midway in his term the magazine carried an emphatic defense of the President’s actions/® The Hayes and Howells families continued on cordial terms, and Howells, several times at least, moved in high political circles. This intimacy was climaxed by a six-day visit to the White House in 1880 which included many political conferences. While Howells hurriedly rejected any rumor that he dreamed of a diplo¬ matic post, he actively lobbied for others, particularly for Lowell, who was assigned the ministry to Spain and later to England. The most tangible service which Hayes, prompted by James A. Gar¬ field, performed for his private and public supporters in the Howells family was to transfer the father from the Quebec consulate to the post he desired at Toronto. When Hayes honored his own earlier proposal of a single term for presidents, Howells preferred as his heir the very conservative Secretary of the Treasury, John Sherman, but the compromise nomi¬ nation of Garfield was wholly acceptable. William Cooper Howells had long ranked among Garfield’s most steadfastly valuable sup¬ porters in the Western Reserve; when Garfield had been under fire in 1873 for taking free shares of the notorious Credit Mobilier stock and for backing the congressional “salary grab,” he had relayed counterarguments to the elder Howells, who promptly inserted them in the Ashtabula Sentinel?'^ The younger Howells had first met XXXIX, 109 (Jan., 1877). The probability that Howells wrote this comment in the first appearance of the new department is very strong; in “Recollections of an Atlantic Editorship,” Atlantic, C, 597 (Nov., 1907), Howells stated that he and G. P. Lathrop wrote this department for the first few months. '“Walter Allen, “Two Years of President Hayes,” XLIV, 190-199 (Aug., 1879). See letter from Schurz to Howells, July 15, 1876, in the Houghton Library; Schurz declined because he planned to “take an active part in the campaign.” Howells had been named as a Cambridge delegate to the state Republican convention in the fall (Boston Globe, Sept. I, 1876, p. i) but very probably did not attend. See also letter, June 4, 1878, in the New York Public Library from Howells to Peleg W. Chandler, a Boston lawyer; Howells asked for an article on the “course and policy of Mr. Hayes’s administration, recognizing the progress made in the promised reforms, and the difficulties overcome”; such an article did not appear. See finally in the Houghton Library Howells’s letter. May 27, 1879, which unsuccessfully asked W. M. Evarts, Secretary of State, to write for the Atlantic. T. C. Smith, Life and Letters of Garfield (New Haven, 1925), I, 550, 572; II, 911. Garfield also aided W. C. Howells in retaining his consulship; see letter from Garfield to W. D. Howells, Sept. 7, 1877, in the Houghton Library. 48 Louis J. Budd Garfield before the Civil War and they had continued a very amicable political as well as social acquaintance during the 1870’s. More than ample evidence proves that Howells consistendy read his family’s outspoken newspaper and quite naturally esteemed Gar¬ field, asking him, for instance, “Do you know a good man to write about the tariff and the silver question—a man for each?”; twice the Ohio Representative’s ideas appeared formally in the New Eng¬ land organ.^^ Garfield’s nomination consoled Howells for Sher¬ man’s reverses, and even the naming of Chester A. Arthur, whom Hayes had labored mightily to dislodge the year before from the spoils-ridden New York Custom House, as Garfield’s fellow-candidate did not perceptibly disturb him. The Atlantic swung into action as Garfield and General Winfield Hancock, the Democratic entry, opened the battle for votes; the editor selected as his commentator Eugene V. Smalley, Garfield’s friend and an Ohioan who also published in 1880 The Republican Manual . . . with Biographical S\etches of James A. Garfield and Chester A. Arthur. In his Atlantic essays Smalley, writing with surface impartiality, extolled Garfield, taking particular pains to convince manufacturers and financiers that extended Republican rule would protect their interests.^^ Following Garfield’s easy victory, the magazine printed Smalley’s happy prediction that the “new president is going to set the country forward a long way.”^® By February 2, 1881, Howells had resigned the Atlantic editorship, but after an assassin’s bullet in July condemned Garfield to a lingering death, he hastened to pronounce an unreserved eulogy over the dead executive, closing with an inevitable parallel between the greatness of Garfield and of Abraham Lincoln.^^ Throughout his editorship Howells dependably furthered Repub¬ lican fortunes during elections. Even Grant’s failings or Garfield’s ‘‘^Letter, Nov. 25, 1877, in Library of Congress. See also letter of Dec. i, 1877, as well as comment in letter dated June 8, 1873, the year Garfield was under attack: “I handed your pamphlet to the gentleman who writes our political articles.” See too Gar¬ field’s ‘‘The Currency Conflict,” XXXVII, 219-236 (Feb., 1876), and “A Century of Progress,” XL, 49-64 (July, 1877). “The Republicans and Their Candidate,” “Progress of the Presidential Canvass,” “Business Issues of the Presidential Canvass,” XLVI, 258-263, 396-401, 555-561 (Aug., Sept., Oct., 1880). ®®“A Look Ahead,” XLVII, 103-108 (Jan., 1881). ^‘“Garfield,” Atlantic, XLVIII, 707-709 (Nov., 1881). Howells and Republicanism 49 coolness toward free trade and civil-service reform could not drive him into the independents’ motley ranks, for he finally supported Grant, Hayes, and Garfield just as faithfully as did a Boston banker or a Pennsylvania ironmonger. Such stalwart Republicanism either impelled or strengthened his habitual condescending satire of Irish immigrants who supported the “wrong side, as by instinct, in poli¬ tics.”^® Howells’s political bias during the 1870’s has been largely ignored; but, after all, it was the slippery Bartley Hubbard of A Modern Instance who expounded with “cynical enjoyment” the theory that “independent” journalism aimed mainly to “come out on the winning side.”^® Thus, while he was mastering the novel¬ ist’s craft Howells also worked within the tradition of partisan journalism which he had absorbed in his youth, and he recognized Garfield’s nomination in 1880 by wiring from Arlington, Massa¬ chusetts, “Congratulations from this part of Ohio.”^^ Ill Presidential elections, of course, only bring to temporary focus many issues of perennial vitality. When Howells came to dominate the Atlantic, it already bore the subtitle of “A Magazine of Liter¬ ature, Science, Art, and Politics,” and he maintained its broad perspective, even adding a topical character which had been lacking. The Atlantic throughout the 1870’s included articles on civil-service agitation, monetary questions, free trade, and education—in short, the vast range of subjects open to enterprising journalism. How¬ ells, like any intelligent citizen, not only supported the party of his choice but also tried moulding the amorphous organism, which every major American political group has been, to match his own ideals. It is relevant, consequently, to sift the bulk of nonliterary Atlantic essays from 1871 to 1881, noting both the editor’s evident Republicanism and his cautious attempts at trend-making. Fiscal policy presents an ever-recurring dilemma, although the concrete issues vary endlessly. Following the Civil War monetary debate centered around whether specie payment should be resumed “A Pedestrian Tour,” Atlantic, XXIV, 595 (Nov., 1869); see also “Recent Travels,” XXIV, 259 (Aug., 1869), and “Politics,” XXX, 127 (July, 1872). See an identical comment, probably by Howells, in the first “Contributor’s Club,” Atlantic, XXXIX, 109 (Jan., 1877). “’June 12, 1880, in Library of Congress. 50 Louis J. Budd or a permanent greenback issue established, and, in effect, whether wartime purchasers of government bonds should be repaid in appre¬ ciated gold for securities bought with depreciated greenbacks. Howells quickly decided that the “party ought to declare unmis¬ takably against every form of repudiation” for “our bond to our creditors ought to be as good as our word to our slaves.” The Atlantic readers were exhorted to support specie resumption and were lengthily warned that greenback money would make the national government the “chief promoter of oppression and fraud”; they were informed that every government which had depended on paper money, like the Republic of Texas, had found the effects “wholly disastrous.” After the Resumption Act of 1875, Garfield quickly sprang to its defense while the other side of the controversy was finally granted a lone article by Henry Carey Baird, a leader of the Greenback movement.^® Howells, informing Garfield that he planned to survey the money question, had solicited an essay, and after the manuscript arrived he called it “admirable” and explained that he would try to use it as a clincher: “. . . I want the right to have the last word.”^ Hard-currency Republicans eventually pre¬ vailed despite an active opposition which finally flowed into the much more dangerous Populist revolt. As vital as the monetary debate in the 1870’s was the bitter quar¬ rel between free trade and protectionism. While the Democrats were alive to the appeal of revising schedules downwards, opinions about keeping the high tariffs first instituted to gain revenue dur¬ ing the late war tended to cut across party lines. Despite his will¬ ingness to softpedal this treacherous point in the Hayes biography, Howells through the Atlantic emphasized the merits of free trade. The prominent freetraders, Edward Atkinson and David A. Wells, contributed scholarly briefs; another article inquired, “Who Pays See Howells’s “The Next President,” XXI, 631-632 (May, 1868), and Ufe of Hayes (Boston, 1876), pp. 109, 131-132; he commented bitterly on the pro-greenback National party in “A New Observer,” XLV, 849 (June, 1880). See also S. R. Reed, “Specie Resumption,” XXX, 598-609 (May, 1873); Edward Atkinson, “An Easy Lesson in Money and Banking,” XXXIV, 195-206 (Aug., 1874); David A. Wells, “A Modern Financial Utopia: How It Grew Up and What Became of It,” XXXIII, 441-452 (April, 1874); J. A. Garfield, “The Currency Conflict,” XXXVII, 219-236 (Feb., 1876); H. C. Baird, “Money and Its Substitutes,” XXXVII, 345-359 (March, 1876). N. S. Shaler, “The Silver Question Geologically Considered,” XLI, 620-629 (May, 1878), called for bimetallism; however, coinage of silver was not then the radical proposal that it seemed in the 1890’s. ““Letters, Sept. 25, Oct. 6, Dec. 5, 1875, in Library of Congress. Howells and Republicanism 51 Protective Duties?” and decided that tariff levies were extracted ulti¬ mately from consumers’ pockets. Against four articles underscoring the low tariff views of the editor, one plea for protection appeared.®” The Atlantic, which desperately and unsuccessfully fought the slow dwindling of its circulation, did not dare clamor blatantly for any faction, but its editor unhesitatingly accorded his own school a much longer hearing. Along with quietly propagandizing for specie payment and free trade, the Atlantic aided Republican liberals like Schurz and God- kin who were fighting vigorously for a civil service based upon merit rather than favoritism. In 1869 Howells had announced his support of Thomas A. Jenckes’s crusade to institute competitive examinations; many formal articles reinforced his incidental com¬ ments in book reviews, and the unscrupulous methods of the self- seeking professional politician and of his tempter and ally, the lobbyist, were mercilessly satirized.®^ Yet Howells, like most early proponents of civil-service reform, advocated this change not to break the power of the major parties but to elevate civic dignity by dis¬ couraging hungry office-seekers from turning to politics for a lucra¬ tive livelihood. No unlimited attack on our party structure was printed in the Atlantic under Howells, and an appeal to voters of “intelligence and education” for reflective action lamely concluded that Garfield deserved support from all independents.®® The editor’s faith in the American party system lived well into the i88o’s, and he would refuse to join the mugwumps, who could not stomach Blaine in 1884. On Reconstruction policy the Atlantic did not especially attempt to mould public opinion, reflecting rather the major swing of senti- Edward Atkinson, “Free Trade—Revenue Reform,” XXVIII, 460-480 (Oct., 1871), and “The Visible and Invisible in Protection,” XXIX, 212-224 (Feb., 1872); David A. Wells, “The Creed of Free Trade,” XXXVI, 204-220 (Aug., 1875); Horatio C. Burchard, “Who Pays Protective Duties?” XLI, 607-615 (May, 1878). Joseph Wharton, “National Self-Protection,” XXXVI, 298-315 (Sept., 1875), supported protection. “'George M. Towle, “Our Consular Service,” XXIX, 300-309 (March, 1872); Dorman B. Eaton, “The Public Service and the Public,” XLI, 241-252 (Feb., 1878); George W. Brown, “English Civil Service Reform,” XLIII, 580-586 (May, 1879). Brown favorably reviewed Dorman Eaton’s Civil Service in Britain-, see XLV, 414-416 (March, 1880). See also J. W. DeForest, “An Inspired Lobbyist,” XXX, 676-684 (Dec., 1872), and [William H. McElroy], “An Old War Horse to a Young Politician,” XLV, 761-765 (June, 1880). ““ Richard M. Bowker, “Political Responsibility of the Individual,” XLVI, 320-328 (Sept., 1880). 52 Louis J. Budd ment. Although Howells had been for a few years a steady Radical, approving even the abortive impeachment of Johnson as a “serio¬ comic necessity,” he nevertheless quickly joined the wide drift among Northern intellectuals toward reconciliation. By 1869 Lowell had begun doubting Radical doctrines, and he was close behind. His abandonment of Radical Reconstruction had solidified by 1874; accepting James L. Pike’s The Prostrate State: South Carolina under Negro Government^ he cried out against “black and white thieves” who “carried into their legislation and administration the spirit of the servile raid on the plantation hen-roost and smoke-house.”^® The Atlantic, it is true, carried during the 1870’s at least seven articles praising John Brown, and Howells fanned old enmities in the pre¬ election months of 1872 and 1876, as well as soliciting constantly memoirs from antislavery veterans like Whittier. Still, the Atlantic hastened cultural reunion by introducing new Southern writers to the Northern audience; for example, Howells asked George Cary Eggleston, a former Confederate soldier, for his RebeVs Recollections and, after the series had been completed, commented that Eggleston had helped readers to “understand that those opposed to the Union in the late war were as sincere as its friends.”®^ Articles describing Southern conditions which the Atlantic printed after 1874 consist¬ ently testified to the ineptness of ruling coalitions of poor whites and freedmen.®® Monetary policy, civil-service reform, and Reconstruction have attracted major study by the historians of the Gilded Age. In addi¬ tion, as one measures the Atlantic’s pages against the mass of con¬ troversy which simmers in every decade, one perceives that many general articles had a specific, although at times incidental, political impact. For instance, throughout the 1870’s the Atlantic featured topics allied with education; nevertheless, William Torrey Harris’s contribution of August, 1876, “The Division of School Funds for Religious Purposes,” which argued for complete secularism in pub- XXXIII, 233-234 (Feb., 1874). See also XXVIII, 125 (July, 1871), and XXXIV, 362 (Sept., 1874). XXXV, 238 (Feb., 1875). See letter from Eggleston to Howells, June 4, 1873, in the Houghton Library. See also Paul H. Buck, The Road to Reunion (Boston, 1933), p. 225. A. F. Webster, “Southern Home-Politics,” XXXVI, 464-467 (Oct., 1875); B. O. Townsend, “The Political Condition of South Carolina,” “South Carolina Morals,” “South Carolina Societ)',” XXXIX, 177-194, 467-475, 670-684 (Feb., April, June, 1877). Howells and Republicanism 53 lie schools, bore directly on the current presidential contest and, unsurprisingly, matched the stand expressed by Hayes’s letter accept¬ ing his nomination, a long document included in Howells’s Life of Hayes. Likewise, criticism of railroad service, safety practices, and financing was heard often and the Atlantic reflected generously the rising complaints; yet Howells managed to serve free trade simul¬ taneously by publishing an argument that Western farmers who groaned under excessive freight rates would best be relieved by a substantial reduction of the iron tariff which would in turn lead to lower railroad construction costs and therefore lower rates.^® It be¬ comes clear that Howells planned painstakingly his periodical’s total effect rather than lavishing all his care on belles-lettres. IV Of course, even faithful party cohorts vary in their broader be¬ liefs. Hindsight shows that the seeds of deviation and revolt hiber¬ nated in Howells’s mind, for by 1892 he was supporting the Populist nominee and preaching, in his Altrurian writings, a quiet Christian socialism. Therefore, to grasp fairly the Atlantic’s Republicanism during his tenure the underlying trend of its topical material must be evaluated. In the early 1870’s he apparently aimed to include in every issue one article of wide social relevance. After the riots of striking railroad workers in 1877 climaxed gathering unrest, each number ordinarily supplied two essays covering social problems, often with challenging frankness. Laurence Gronlund, in his ex¬ position of an Americanized Marxism, The Co-Operative Common¬ wealth (1884), cited with approval six articles which had graced the Atlantic during 1879 and 1880.®^ Charles Edward Russell, later a Socialist and the historian of the “Beef Trust,” testified that H. D. Lloyd’s documented “Story of a Great Monopoly,” which attacked the Standard Oil Company’s machinations, first unveiled for him the true nature of industrialism.®® Deeply disturbed by the first W. M. Grosvenor, “The Railroads and the Farms,” XXXII, 591-610 (Nov., 1873). ^’’The Co-Operative Commonwealth (Boston, 1890), pp. 41-42, 44, 60-61, 84, 175, 249. Although Lloyd’s article did not appear until March, 1881, when T. B. Aldrich was the new editor, Howells had accepted it for publication. He had consulted C. F. Adams, Jr., about it late in 1880; see Adams’s letter to Howells, Dec. 5, 1880, in the Houghton Library. See also the postcard from Howells to Lloyd, Dec. 6, 1880, in H. D. Lloyd papers in the library of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin; he wrote: “I accept your paper with pleasure, and will give it first place in the Atlantic for March.” 54 Louis J. Budd economic depression to develop since his reaching maturity, Howells tried to analyze the catastrophe for his public. The Atlantic did not ignore the suffering and social insecurity which dramatized mass unemployment after the panic of 1873. The plight of orphans and child laborers, the hopeless suffering among Southern farm tenants, the financial distress of small Western farm¬ ers, and the depressing prospect for New England factory hands gained a sympathetic hearing.^® Obviously sharing the widespread sense of crisis, Howells printed such pleas for minor reforms as Richard T. Ely’s advocacy of credit unions patterned after German self-help organizations, George Waring’s call for farmers’ marketing co-ops, or George W. Julian’s vehement attempt to aid a sane revision of laws hastily dissipating the public domain.^ During his last two editorial years Howells conducted an all but formal symposium on the cause of the depression, and at least ten articles offering some comfort or solution appeared. Brooks Adams blamed “excessive and unnecessary taxation,” Erastus B. Bigelow, a wealthy inventor and manufacturer, excoriated “excessive credit,” and Uriel H. Crocker, a prominent publisher and railroad director, anticipated the New Deal by demanding expanded spending to restimulate the flagging econ¬ omy. Others called for consumers’ and producers’ co-operatives or for enlarged consumption to meet growing productive capacities. Inevitably, several optimists calmly saw the setback as merely a temporary hitch in an essentially sound economic growth.^^ Emma E. Brown, “Children’s Labor: a Problem,” XLVI, 787-792 (Dec., 1880); [Lillie C. Wyman], “The Child of the State,” XL, 334-347 (Sept, 1877). Ten years later, when the latter story was included in the book Poverty Grass, Howells singled it out for praise in “Editor’s Smdy,” Harper’s Monthly, LXXIV, 482-483 (Feb., 1887). See also James B. Runnion, “The Negro Exodus,” XLIV, 223-230 (Aug., 1879); [W. G. Moody], “Kansas Farmers and Illinois Dairymen,” XLIV, 717-725 (Dec., 1879), and “The Bonzana Farms of the West,” XLV, 33-44 (Jan., 1880); [Robert Grieve], “People of a New Eng¬ land Factory Village,” XLVI, 460-464 (Oct, 1880). R. T. Ely, “German Cooperative Credit-Unions,” XLVII, 207-223 (Feb., 1881); G. E. Waring, Jr., “Life and Work of the Eastern Farmer,” XXXIX, 584-595 (May, 1877); G. W. Julian, “Our Land Policy,” XLIII, 325-337 (March, 1879). ‘^Brooks Adams, “Abuse of Taxation,” XLII, 453-458 (Oct., 1878), and “Oppressive Taxation and Its Remedy,” 761-768 (Dec., 1878); David A. Wells, “Are Titles and Debts Property?” XL, 347-363 (Sept., 1877); E. B. Bigelow, “The Relations of Labor and Capital,” XLII, 475-487 (Oct, 1878); Uriel Crocker, “Saving and Spending,” XLII, 691-696 (Dec., 1878); Frank Richards, “A Workingman’s Word on Over-Producdon,” XLIII, 497-500 (April, 1879); Alfred B. Mason, “Abolition of Poverty,” XLIII, 602-609 (May, 1879); G. M. Beard, “Physical Future of the American People,” XLIII, 718-728 (June, 1879); Charles C. CofBn, “Labor and the Natural Forces,” XLIII, 553-566 (May, 1879). Howells and Republicanism 55 A few valid conclusions may sum up this informal Atlantic forum. Dominating, above all, was the optimistic conservatism of “practical” men with whom Howells had some emotional kin¬ ship as key figure in a substantial publishing venture; several con¬ tributors, like Bigelow and Crocker, were wealthy businessmen. The interdependence between capital and labor was accented; any recognition of wavering in this mutuality sided with employers’ grievances. Thomas Bailey Aldrich’s The Stillwater Tragedy (1880), serialized first in the Atlantic, had as a subplot a labor strike inspired by foreign-born malcontents; Howells, reviewing the novel very favorably, particularly commended the strike sequence as a “contribution to our knowledge of such matters.”^^ Speaking last in the symposium, Edward Atkinson scored all cant about the “claims of labor,” defended the technologically minded capitalist as the “true labor reformer,” and bluntly sermonized on the high func¬ tion of wealth and the wealthy.^^ Henry George’s Progress and Poverty was handled gingerly; one reviewer attacked George and another ventured guarded praise.^^ Looking at the far Left, Arthur Sedgwick derided the Socialist Labor Party as intellectually atavistic, while a scholarly essay on socialism in Germany closed with a rebuttal insisting that progress could spring only from the free and moral individual.^'’ Socialistic spokesmen were not invited to de¬ fend their viewpoint, and proposals for producers’ and consumers’ cooperatives marked the radical extreme in the range of analyses and suggestions concerning the depression. No editor of a general periodical can or does agree with all the material he accepts, and to establish Howells’s precise reactions to each essay is impossible. Fortunately, he indicated his particular preference for the reasoning of Jonathan B. Harrison, a minister *■‘‘Mr. Aldrich’s Fiction,” XLVI, 697 (Nov., 1880). “The Unlearned Professions,” XLV, 742-753 (June, 1880). See also Atkinson’s “The Righteousness of Money-Making,” XXXIV, 686-693 (Dec., 1874), and [Anon.], “The Career of a Capitalist,” XLIII, 129-134 (Feb., 1879). “William B. Weeden and George W. Brown, XLVI, 846-854 (Dec., 1880). Brown was more favorable toward George than was Weeden. Arthur Sedgwick, “Primitive Communism,” XLIl, 337-342 (Sept., 1878); George W. Brown, “Socialism in Germany,” XLIV, 521-532 (Oct., 1879). Howells had tried to per¬ suade G. W. Curtis to publish Brown’s essay in a longer form; see letter to Curtis, April 23, 1879, in the Boston Public Library. Shortly before Howells became full editor, Richard J. Hinton’s “Organization of Labor,” XXVII, 544-569 (May, 1871), presented a scholarly study of European and American left-wing labor groups. 56 Louis J. Budd who contributed between October, 1878, and October, 1879, eight essays, five of them leading articles in their respective numbers. When these essays were collected as Certain Dangerous Tendencies in American Life (1880), Howells prepared an enthusiastic review which confirmed explicitly his editorial blessing, and over a decade later he identified Harrison as “my old friend . . . who used to write such strong papers for the Atlantic.”*^ A summary of Har¬ rison’s argument, therefore, strongly indicates Howells’s political position during his final Atlantic years. Harrison wished a rapprochement between capital and labor but distinctly picked out wage earners as the more culpable group. While urging capitalists to content themselves with “small profits,” he also ringingly rejected the rising demand for the eight-hour day, warning that more than eight hours daily labor was needed to “keep down and utilize the forces of the animal nature and passions.” Broader education, also, would safeguard against radical “illusion” which had encouraged the partial success of the inflationist National Party in 1878. Since the “masses” clung to erroneous and imprac¬ tical opinions, “those who believe that property and culture are essential to our civilization must present their case.” Harrison typically suggested: GduH not something be done in the way of increased publicity on the part of their managers regarding the essential features, methods, and conditions of the great business and manufacturing enterprises of the country, so that workmen could better understand the justice and neces¬ sity of the course of action pursued by their employers?^' In essence, while imploring mutual self-sacrifice and tolerance, Harrison mainly hoped that the working classes could be shown, through a “sincere demagogery,” how wise were the guiding ideals of their economic superiors. Howells found no major ideas in Certain Dangerous Tendencies in American Life with which to differ publicly. Obviously, he still Life and Letters of Howells, II, 34; letter, Feb. 19, 1893. Harrison was introduced into the Cambridge circle by C. E. Norton; see letter from Howells to Norton, Sept. 4, 1878, in Houghton Library, for comment: “I think Harrison’s papers will do great good. . . .” When Howells was co-editor of the Cosmopolitan for a few months, it carried Harrison’s “The State and the Forest,” XIII, 300-310 (July, 1892). *’ Certain Dangerous Tendencies in American Life (Boston, 1880), p. 256. Howells and Republicanism 57 believed in 1880 that tolerance and self-restraint would bridge any economic gap and insure future progress. Reviewing this “clear, penetrating” study, he answered the complaint that Harrison was pessimistic by exclaiming: “If it is pessimism to show the rich what excellent types of character exist among workingmen and their wives, and to teach the poor how a capitalist may be necessarily their friend, by all means let us have nothing but pessimism here¬ after.”^* He did not mention Harrison’s concluding plea for sus¬ tained conservative propaganda, but it has already been shown that the Atlantic’s pages, as in treating the hard times, awarded the ideas of Harrison and similar conservatives a complete, prominent display. v In conclusion, it should be cautioned that this study does not examine exhaustively Howells’s political ideas during his New Eng¬ land years; much more space would be required and his creative literature would demand treatment. Although he did not write problem novels during the 1870’s, some incidental commentary in Their Wedding Journey (1872) dealt with civic matters; his one- act play Out of the Question in part manipulated interestingly two tramps, and unemployed transients figured for a moment in The Undiscovered Country (1880); A Woman’s Reason, finally printed in 1883, more than touched upon the past depression. Looking backward from Howells’s later radicalism, one may find incipient rebellion hinted and may pay keen attention to the Atlantic’s evi¬ dent interest during the 1870’s in utopian ideas. Finally, one may wonder whether Howells’s willingness to resign in 1881 was not partly motivated by a growing inner clash between political ortho¬ doxy and the mild but stubborn radicalism which guided him after 1886, by a bewilderment or frustration possibly crystallized through reading and accepting for publication Lloyd’s disturbing “Story of a Great Monopoly.” On November 25, 1877, Howells wrote to Garfield: “. .. can you give me an idea of questions likely to come prominently before Congress this winter? I should like to treat them seasonably in the magazine.”^* This essay has contended that during his ten years “A New Observer,” Atlantic, XLV, 849 (June, 1880). Letter in Garfield papers, Library of Congress. 58 Louis J. Budd editing the Atlaiitic Howells was a political journalist as well as a literary critic, that he aided the Republican party from Boston just as he had done from Columbus and New York City, that he made the Atlantic reflect political views acceptable to himself ^and most educated Republicans, and that he in the main allowed his magazine to voice the conservative rationale. The present examination of Howells’s handling of the Atlantic helps one to understand his sympathetic picture of the American self-made man. It is well to remember that The Rise of Silas Lapham came before A Hazard of New Fortunes. William Dean Howells, Ed Howe, and The Story of a Country Town James B. Stronks W HEN ED howe’s Stovy of a Country Town was off the press in his Atchison, Kansas, printing shop in 1883, he sent a copy to William Dean Howells, who wrote to the thirty-year-old Howe, praising his bitter, anti-idealistic novel as a valuable new kind of realism in American fiction. Howells’s long-buried letter is worth bringing to light, as are also Howe’s hitherto unpublished letters to him. Howells’s large effect upon the reception of The Story of a Country Town and the facts of his little-known connection with Howe deepen our knowledge of his role, public and private, as leader of the early realists. Howells’s letter to Howe was typical of his thinking and critical manner in the early eighties, and reads much like the review which he wrote soon after: Louisburg Square Boston, April 16, 1884 DEAR sir: I wish to thank you for the copy of your Story of a Country Town which you sent me, and for the very great pleasure I have had in reading it. Consciously or unconsciously, it is a very remarkable piece of realism, and, whether it makes you known now or not, it constitutes your part of the only literary movement of our times [i.e., the realistic] that seems to have vitality in it. I have never lived as far West as Kansas but I have lived in your country town, and 1 know it is every word true, down to the perpetual Scriptural disputes of the inhabitants. Fairview and its people are also actualities, which even if I have never seen them—and 1 have—your book would persuade me of. Such people in the story are excellent, all natural and sentient, except the last half of your Jo, who slops into sentimentality and driveling wickedness, wholly unworthy. Biggs in delightful, and all his household. John Westlock is a grim and most pathetic tragedy; his wife moves me less, but she is alive, too. I have no time to specify, and I don’t know how to tell you of the impres¬ sions of simple, naked humaness [^/c] that the book gives me. It has many faults, as any fool can show you, but be sure that you have written so good a book that it wdll be hard for you to write a better. I am 6o James B. Stronks afraid that you will never write another so sincere and frank. I wish I could see you; hut upon your honest piece of work I give you my hand with my heart in it. Yours truly, W. D. HOWELLS. Have you read Zola or Tourguenieff.? Will you send me your foto- graph?^ To this Howe replied three weeks later in a long personal letter in which he said “I am devouring Howells’s novels,” adding grate¬ fully: I think it is very much to your credit that you have taken an interest in my poor affair; the next time I meet a lame dog I will see if I cannot do something for him. There are so many contemptible and mean men in the world that it is a real satisfaction to meet one who is not only great, but good. I mean that very few gentlemen at the top of the ladder have heart enough to reach down, and encourage those at the bottom. I have always admired W. D. Howells and Mark Twain; I will admire them more than ever now that I know what splendid fellows they are.^ I have about concluded that every man who becomes great by his own efforts is a good man; if I have a hope to become a great man, it is also a hope to become a good one. The letter and the picture came to hand, and I am very proud of both. I can only hope that in the future I may prove worthy of your good opinion. I intend to try and make the new story read so smoothly that Mr. Howells and Mr. Clemens can say when it appears: “I knew there was something (not much, but a little) in that fellow. I am glad I wrote to him.” When I get out my writing at night now, it is with a view to satisfying Howells and Clemens rather than the public.® Soon thereafter Howells reviewed T he Story of a Country Town for the Century Magazine. Appearing in the August, 1884, number, his signed criticism beat into print by two or three months those of almost all other Eastern reviewers. His alacrity bespoke his special ^ The only known extant letter among several from Howells to Howe, this is reprinted from the Kansas City Star Magazine, March i, 1925, pp. 9, 17. Howells’s copy of the Atchison edition of The Story of a Country Town, in the Howells Collection at Harvard, bears Howe’s signature on the front fly-leaf, his spelling corrections at many points, and penciled crosses—presumably Howells’s reading marks—throughout the text. “Twain, too, had written to Howe. See “Mark Twain’s Criticism of The Story of a Country Town," American Literature, XXVII, 109-112 (March, 1955). “Unpublished 850-word letter of May 7, 1884, in the Howells Collection, Harvard. It is quoted, as are all of Howe’s letters in this paper, with the kind permission of Mr. James P. Howe. William Dean Howells and Ed Howe 6i interest in Howe’s novel, as did the fact that he reviewed it at all, for in this year he wrote criticisms of only two other books. With an economy of effort, Howells apparently kept a copy of his letter to Howe and simply expanded it to review length, re-using many of its very phrases. As in a good many of his criticisms of realistic novels in the eighties and nineties, Howells wished not only to praise Howe’s book but also to make propaganda out of it for the still new cause of realism. In such cases, as his own critics were to protest, Howells would not judge a realist’s work impartially so much as he would overlook its failings in order to preach about its realism.^ His praise was often vague, as when he says that he especially likes The Story of a Country Town for its “mere open humanness.”® Also typical is the way in which Howells softens and generalizes his criticism: Howe’s Story “has defects enough,” he blandly concedes, “which no one can read far without discovering”—but he is not specific about these defects, which were in fact substantial and interesting ones. Howells’s single firm objection to The Story of a Country Town is, characteristically, to the “sentimental excess and unbal¬ ance” of the homicidal protagonist Jo Erring, which he says “comes near spoiling the strong, hard-headed, clear-conscienced story.” Brushing aside Howe’s obvious mistakes, Howells chooses to emphasize instead the fact that the new Kansas realist “perceives and states” the “conditions” of life with frankness and sincerity, and that he tells the distasteful truth as he sees it. What Howells most admires in Howe’s “honest piece of work” is “the apparently un¬ conscious fearlessness with which all the facts of the case, good, bad, and indifferent are recognized.” Other reviewers, too, were to call the novel “realistic,” but it was Howells, realism’s chief authority, who most strongly praised Howe’s “grim truth.” Even the hostile H. L. Mencken of the 1920’s, when he was severely attacking Howells’s values, looked back admiringly at the critic’s “bold parti¬ sanship” for Ed Howe’s pessimistic, unlovely book in 1884.® Indeed, Howells’s respect for such harsh, depressing material as Howe’s, or that of otlier Midwestern realists of the eighties, suggests what an open mind he had toward ugly and painful truth in fiction; and it challenges the shallow latter-day notion that he had a stomach only for what he termed die “smiling aspects of life.” * See Horace Scudder, “Mr. Howells’s Literary Creed,” Atlantic Monthly, LXWII, 567 (Oct., 1891). ‘ “Two Notable Novels,” Century Magazine, XXVIII, 633 (Aug., 1884). * “An American Novel,” Smart Set, LXIV, 140 (Jan., 1921). 62 James B. Stronks What Mencken called Howells’s “bold partisanship” for The Story of a Country Town appears sharply when it is contrasted with Horace Scudder’s judicious review in the Atlantic, which spoke for a large, respected, and conservative faction of polite letters. Where Howells warmly praises the “realism” in general terms, Scudder coolly criticizes the bad writing in specific ones—citing the novel’s thematic and structural weakness, its trite plot, its morbidity and lack of common sense.^ Yet Howells was at this time writing The Rise of Silas Lapham and was soon to begin Indian Summer, novels as shapely and well wrought as any which the generation was to produce; he was, that is, as sensitive to the artistic niceties, or to their abuse, as were any of the critics of The Story of a Country Town. His review of Ed Howe’s book would have been more just, and more informative for Century readers, if it had specified tlie Kansan’s shortcomings; but the point is that Howells considered Howe’s literary unskilfulness to be less important than his honesty and nerve in putting squarely before the reader some unpalatable truths about human nature and the Western village. In the evolution of Howells’s critical values, his enthusiasm in 1884 for Howe’s inex¬ pert novel marked a stage at which his aesthetic criteria had begun to defer to his new ethical and humanitarian ones. Truth to real life was becoming for him more important than mere technical skill. The fact was fortunate not only for the novice Ed Howe, but also for other Midwestern realists whom Howells championed in the eighties; Joseph Kirkland and Hamlin Garland, too, were to be short on hterary finesse but long on honesty and accuracy. When Howells’s criticism of The Story of a Country Town ap¬ peared, Howe wrote to him at once. “I want to thank you for the review in the CenturyT he said, among other things. “I cannot tell you how grateful I am, or how much I appreciate your former gen¬ erous words.”® But besides boosting Howe’s book publicly and Howe’s confidence privately, Howells urged his own publisher, James R. Osgood of Boston, to reprint The Story of a Country Town? Seven Eastern publishers had rejected it in manuscript in 1883, but following Howells’s influential review in the August, 1884, ''Atlantic Monthly, LV, 125-127 (Jan., 1885). “Unpublished 350-word letter of July 28, 1884, in the Howells Collection, Harvard. “Joseph R. Kathrens, “The Story of a Story,” Kansas City Star Magazine, March l, 1925, p. 9. William Dean Howells and Ed Howe 63 Century, Osgood—competing with four other houses for the privi¬ lege—hurried to republish the book by September. And the editor of the Century now invited a story from the promising Westerner. Happily reporting all this to Howells, and impressed by his large debt to the critic, Howe gratefully wrote, “I sometimes regret your great fame, fearing that I can never repay you for your kindness to me.”^® Shortly thereafter, according to Howe’s assistant at the time, the first Eastern printing of The Story of a Country Town “went like wildfire and was exhausted the first week. The Century review by Howells had much to do with the early sale of the book. The second edition disappeared . . . almost as rapidly.”” Widely publi¬ cized by Howe’s publisher and by literary columnists, Howells’s letter to Howe and his review of T he Story were respectfully quoted by a whole shoal of lesser critics in 1884 and 1885. Indeed, the re¬ view was reprinted as late as 1917 as an introduction to one of the later editions of the novel, and both the review and the letter were still being exploited to the novel’s prestige and profit as late as the 1927 edition. Despite Howells’s advice that he not hurry into print with his second book, Howe finished The Mystery of the Lochs in the fall of 1884, asking Howells’s advice on some points in the art of fiction. With a rather surprising confidence in a manuscript which he had not seen, Howells offered personally to find a publisher for it. Of this valuable proposal Howe wrote, “I shall always believe that your notice in the ‘Century’ sold 2,500 [i.e., extra] copies of ‘The Story’ [i.e., in the novel’s first two months], and I need not say that I am sincerely grateful to you, not only for the offer, but for many other kindnesses. . . And in closing, Howe reflected once more on his relationship to Howells: “Whether the new story is a success or not, I shall always think of you as the chief gentleman of my ac¬ quaintance; I often wonder whether I would do as much to help a new man as you have done for me, providing I were in your position.” But Howells’s help to Howe was about at an end. The new story—the one which Howe had said he was writing to please Howells rather than the public—was a poor job. In the years following it, the overworked Kansan, writing at night after get- Letter of July 28, 1884. Kathrens, p. 9. ’“Unpublished 425-\vord letter of Nov. 27, 1884, in the Howells Collection, Harvard. 64 James B. Stronks ting out his Atchison Globe each day, ground out several more novels, but they were not worth much. The autobiographical Story of a Country Town had been charged with personal anger and disappointment, but Howe’s contrived later fictions fell far short of its veracity and force. In “The Editor’s Study” of Harper s Monthly, Howells was now more eager than ever to publicize good—some¬ times less than good—realistic work, yet he was silent about all of Howe’s later novels. Gradually it became clear that his original instinct about the Kansan had been right: Upon first reading The Story of a Country Town he had shrewdly suspected that Howe would never again write so good a novel. This proved to be true, but meanwhile Howells had powerfully promoted the career and reputation of that remarkable American book—and had inciden¬ tally made good use of it in his own campaign for the new realism. The Ethical Unity of The Rise of Silas Lapham Donald Pizer C ritics of Howells’s The Rise of Silas Lapham have usually ex¬ amined its subplot as an excrescence arising from a need to satis¬ fy the popular demand for a romantic entanglement, as a digressive attack on the sentimental self-sacrifice of the “Tears, Idle Tears” variety, or as an overexpansion of the comedy of manners strain in the novel. Each of these points of view has a certain validity. But it is also true that the subplot and main plot have fundamentally simi¬ lar themes, and that an examination of the thematic function of the subplot will elucidate both the ethical core of the novel and the relationship of that core to a prominent theme in Howells’s later economic novels.^ I The main plot of The Rise of Silas Lapham concerns Silas’s financial fall and moral rise. It revolves around his business affairs and social aspirations, and it concludes with his decision to sacrifice wealth and position rather than engage in business duplicity. The subplot centers on the triangle of Tom Corey and Irene and Penel¬ ope Lapham. Tom is mistakenly believed by all to be in love with Irene. The dilemma caused by his revelation that he loves Penelope is resolved when Irene is informed of the error. Irene then with¬ draws, leaving Tom and Penelope free to marry. The dilemma or conflict within the subplot is solved by the use of an “economy of pain” formula." Despite Penelope’s willingness to sacrifice herself, Irene must be told of Corey’s true sentiments, and Penelope and Corey must be encouraged to fulfil their love. In ’The most satisfying explications of the novel are by George Arms, The Rise of Silas Lapham, Rinehart Editions (New York, 1049), pp. v-xvi; Everett Carter, Howells and the Age of Realism (Philadelphia, 1954), pp. 164-169; Edwin H. Cady, The Road to Realism (Syracuse, 1956), pp. 230-240: and George N. Bennett, William Dean Howells: The De¬ velopment of a Novelist (Norman, Okla., 1959), pp. 150-161. Cady and Carter have also written excellent introductions to reprints of the novel in the Riverside Editions and Harper’s Modern Classics series, respectively. Carter comes closest to discussing the theme of the novel as I do, though he defines it differently and does not analyze the relationship between the .■nain plot and the subplot. -The Rise of Silas Lapham (Boston, 1885), p. 338. 66 Donald Pizer this way Irene suffers but Penelope and Tom are spared the pain of thwarted love. One rather than three suffers lasting pain. Of the three characters who determine the resolution of the subplot, Lap- ham realizes instinctively the correct course of action, Mrs. Lapham is helpless and hesitant—this despite her moralizing throughout the novel—and the clergyman Sewell ardculates the principle involved and confirms Lapham’s choice. The problem which Silas must solve in the main plot parallels that in the subplot. The three groups who will be affected by his decision are he and his family (Lapham is a participant now as well as an arbiter), Rogers and his family, and the English agents who wish to purchase Lapham’s depreciated mill.® The crucial point is that the Englishmen are more than mere scoundrels and more than the agents for an “association of rich and charitable people”;^ they also represent society at large. This fact is somewhat obscured in the context of the financial trickery involved in the sale, since the agents are willing to be cheated. But Howells indicated the social implications of the sale when he immediately compared it to the defrauding of municipal governments. In both instances wealth and anonymity encourage dishonesty, and in both instances dis¬ honesty undermines that which is necessary for the maintenance of the common good—effective city governments on the one hand, fair play and honest dealings in business affairs on the other. Lapham’s refusal to sell therefore ultimatelv contributes to the well-beina of * O society as a whole. The thematic similarity in the two plots is that both involve a principle of morahty which requires that the individual determine correct action by reference to the common good rather than to an individual need. Within the subplot this principle requires Lapham to choose on the basis of an “economy of pain” formula in which the fewest suffer. Within the main plot it requires him to weigh his own and Rogers’s personal needs against, the greater need of all men for decency and honesty. His “rise” is posited exactly in these terms, for at one point in the events leading up to his rejection of the Englishmen’s offer he reflects quizzically that “It was certainly ridic- ® Although Howells hints that the agents are counterfeit ratlier than real Englishmen, I have followed him in designating them as English. * The Rise of Silas Lapham, p. 458. Ethical Unity in Rise of Silas Lapham 67 ulous for a man who had once so selfishly consulted his own interests to be stickhng now about the rights of others.”^ The method used to achieve moral insight is also similar in both plots. What is required is the ability to project oneself out of the immediate problem in which the personal, emotionally compelling need or desire is seen out of proportion to the need of the larger unit. In the subplot Mrs. Lapham finds this difficult, and Sewell asks her, “ ‘What do you think some one else ought to do in your place V In the main plot it is no doubt Silas’s realization of the honesty that he would ask of other men in a similar situation which aids him in making the same demand of himself. Lastly, as in the subplot, Silas is capable of moral insight, Mrs. Lapham again falters, and Sewell (at the end of the novel) attempts explanations. One of the functions of the subplot is therefore to “double” the moral theme of the novel, to intensify and clarify it by introducing it within a narrower, more transparent dilemma. The subplot also plays other important roles. Dominating the center of the novel, it is solved before the full exposition of Lapham’s business crisis.^ It occurs, in other words, between Howells’s early remark that Lap¬ ham “could not rise”® to unselfishness in his dealings with Rogers and Lapham’s own words at the close which indicate a concern for the “rights of others.” The subplot thus contributes to the “educa¬ tion” of Lapham in the correct solution of moral problems. His moral rise is the product of more than a conscience troubled by his earlier treatment of Rogers. It is also the result of his ready absorp¬ tion of the “economy of pain” formula as a moral guide in the sub¬ plot, a formula which he later translates into its exact corollary, the greatest happiness for the greatest number, when he is faced in the main plot with the more difficult problem of the ethical relationship of the individual to society. To sum up, the subplot of The Rise of Silas Lapham serves the functions of doubling the statement of the novel’s theme, of foreshadowing the moral principle governing the ® Ibid., p. 466. * Ibid., p. 338. ’ By the close of Chapter xix Irene has been told of Tom’s preference, Lapham has given Tom permission to continue courting Penelope, and Penelope has indicated (in the final words of Chapter xix) that it will only be a matter of time before she will accept Tom. The problem of the depreciated mill is introduced in the next chapter. ® The Rise of Silas Lapham, p. 67. 68 Donald Pizer main plot, and of introducing Lapham to the correct solution of moral problems.® II It is possible, at this point, to suggest that the ethical core of the novel can be described as utilitarianism (as interpreted by John Stuart Mill), since both plots dramatize a moral principle in which the correct action is that which results in the greatest happiness for the greatest number. I do not wish to intimate that Howells con¬ sciously employed the ethical ideas of Mill. Rather, I believe that the similarity between Mill’s utihtarianism and the ethical principles of The Rise of Silas Lapham is probably the result of parallel at¬ tempts to introduce the ethical teachings of Christ within social con¬ texts and yet avoid supernatural sanctions. Howells’s emerging Christian socialism in the late i88o’s is well known,^® and Mill wrote: I must again repeat . . . that the happiness which forms the utilitarian standard of what is right in conduct, is not the agent’s own happiness, hut that of all concerned. ... In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To do as you would be done by, and to love your neighbour as yourself, constitute the ideal per¬ fection of utilitarian morality.^^ That Howells was conscious of the applicability of the Golden Rule to the theme of The Rise of Silas Lapham is clear, I believe, from his ironic use of it in connection with Rogers. When Rogers senses that Lapham may reject the Englishmen’s offer, his appeal to Lapham is based on the premise that In our dealings with each other vjt should be guided by the Golden Rule, as I was saying to Mrs. Lapham before you came in. I told her that if I knew myself, I should in your place consider the circumstances of a man in mine, who had honourably endeavoured to discharge his obli¬ gations to me, and had patiently borne my undeserved suspicions. I should consider that man’s family, I told Mrs. Lapham. * Mrs. Lapham’s ethical values are a foil to those which Lapham ultimately practices. Her moral beliefs are strongly held but are fragmented; she is helpless and uncertain when a conflict of interests is present and a universal moral criterion is needed. See particularly Clara and Rudolph Kirk, “Howells and the Church of the Carpenter,” New England Quarterly, XXXII, 185-206 (June, 1959). Utilitarianism, I.iherty, and Representative Government, Everyman’s Library, p. 16. Ethical Unity in Rise of Silas Lapham 69 But Lapham’s answer is the response of a man who is aware of tlie sophistry of a narrow use of the Golden Rule and who recognizes the necessity for the consideration of a wider range of obligation than individual need. “ ‘Did you tell her,’ ” he asks Rogers, “ ‘that if I went in with you and those fellows, I should be robbing the people who trusted them ?’ III There is a twofold advantage in viewing the main and sub¬ plots of The Rise of Silas Lapham as controlled by a similar concep¬ tion of moral behavior. First, the novel takes on a thematic unity and structural symmetry. It is within a single moral system, for example, that the apparent conflict between the attack on self-sacri¬ fice in the subplot and Lapham’s self-sacrifice in the main plot is reconciled. Penelope’s self-sacrifice would diminish the sum total of happiness of those affected by her action, and therefore is wrong; Silas’s self-sacrifice increases the happiness of mankind collectively, and therefore is right.^^ Secondly, the theme of the novel antici¬ pates Howells’s acceptance of Tolstoy’s ethical ideals within the next few years and helps explain his response to those ideals once he encountered them. For in the two plots of The Rise of Silas Lapham Howells had already begun working out a belief that man must rise above himself and view life, as, he later explained, Tolstoy had taught him to view life, “not as a chase of a forever impossible personal happiness, but as a field for endeavor toward the happiness of the whole human family.”^^ The conviction that man’s primary commitment is to mankind was to be one of the themes which Howells emphasized in the series of novels from Annie Kilburn (1888) to A Traveler from Altruria (1894). In The Rise of Silas Laphayn that theme appears in a less obvious social context (Howells had to strain for the connection between the English agents and ^~The Rise of Silas Lapham, p. 462. Cf. Mill, Utilitarianism, pp. 15-16: “The utilitnrian morality does recognize in human beings the power of sacrificing their greatest good for the good of others. It only refuses to admit that the sacrifice is itself a good. A sacrifice which does not increase, or tend to increase, the sum total of happiness, it considers as wasted. The only self-renuncia¬ tion which it applauds, is devotion to the happiness, or to some of the means of happiness, of others; either of mankind collectively, or of individuals within the limits imposed by the collective interests of mankind." Howells, My Literary Passions (New York, 1895), p. 251. 70 Donald Pizer society) and—more importantly—as an obligation which the average individual can grasp and fulfil. His novels during the years fol¬ lowing the Haymarket crisis were to examine the theme of man’s duty to his fellow men more intensively but less hopefully. Point of View in Howells’s The Landlord at Lion’s Head William Me Murray T he landlord at lion’s head, one of William Dean Howells’s lesser-known but better novels, opens with a depiction of Lion’s Head Mountain that foreshadows the novelist’s manipulation of point of view in his novel. In viewing the mountain, one grows aware of an ambiguous quality about it: “If you looked at the mountain from the west, the line of the summit was wandering and uncertain, like that of most mountain-tops; but, seen from the east, the mass of granite showing above the dense forests of the lower slopes had the form of a sleeping lion.”^ What one sees is apparently determined by one’s point of view. The lion’s body, seen from the east, is only vaguely discernible; but its head is “boldly sculptured against the sky” in a likeness that could not be more perfect “if it had been a definite intention of art.” Often hidden by clouds in winter. Lion’s Head in summer “was a part of the landscape, as imperative and importunate as the Great Stone Face itself” (p. 3). Howells here is almost certainly alluding to Hawthorne’s story “The Great Stone Face.” The mountain in that story comes to stand for an image of the divine. In Howells’s novel the mountain is that which is given, the world as fact, standing imperatively over against us and importuning us to make something of it. What the people in Howells’s novel do make of the mountain and, by anal¬ ogy, of its hero, Jeff Durgin, is what Howells’s novel is about. Edwin H. Cady observes: “The problem of the novel is to see what it will mean that Jeff becomes the landlord at Lion’s Head.”^ Reading the novel as a Howellsian “research into the plight of ^William Dean Howells, The Landlord at Lion's Head (Library Edition, New York, 1911), p. 3. Subsequent citations of the novel are made parenthetically in the text and refer to this edition. First published in 1897. “Edwin H. Cady, The Realist at War (Syracuse, N. Y., 1958). Cady’s discussion of the novel is on pages 224-229 of his book. 72 William McMurray civilization in modern American life,” and seeing Jeff Durgin primarily through Westover’s eyes, Mr. Cady, though admitting that Howells does not tell us what to think, tends to conclude that Jeff, “for all his compensating attractiveness, is a bully, a ‘black¬ guard,’ and a savage—completely beyond the reach of discipline from within or without.” For Mr. Cady, Jeff is a type of un¬ scrupulous American success in a corrupt civilization. George N. Bennett points out that Howells “was not interested in merely showing Jeff; he wanted to understand him. As much as he disap¬ proved of him, Howells did not fall into the easy simplification of portraying a blackguard.” Mr. Bennett regrets Jeff’s lack of moral sense and sees him as one more Howells “reminder that any thin g less than the highest conception of the individual responsibility is bound to result in a corresponding reduction of moral accomplish¬ ment.”® Doubtless the majority of us are more at ease with the Westovers than with the Jeff Durgins of the world. Knowing well the challenge of the Jeff Durgins to our inmost selves, Howells, apologizing for the “unpleasant” people in his story, said to C. E. Norton, not without irony: “The pleasant people are more famihar to our experience; you are entirely right; and I do not know why I should have made so many unpleasant ones, unless it is because they are easier to do.”^ To see what it would mean that Jeff Durgin became the landlord at Lion’s Head, Howells knew, would be to see what it meant to someone. Since Howells’s novel draws an implicit parallel between life and art, it is fitting that, as Mr. Cady also notes, we see Jeff Durgin mainly through the eyes of the artist from Boston, Jere Westover. As the story begins, Westover, hiking one summer’s day through primitive up-country New England, finds himself arrived at an iso¬ lated farmhouse. Introducing himself to the people who live there, he explains that he has come to paint Lion’s Head Mountain. If Mrs. Durgin will let him stay on for a few days while he works at his painting, Westover will pay for his food and lodging (ironically, Durgin’s farm eventually becomes a fancy summer hotel that proves repugnant to Westover). Westover stays longer than he had ® George N. Bennett, William Dean Howells, The Development of a Novelist (Norman, Okla., 1959), p. 207. ‘Unpublished letter, dated July i, 1897. The letter, a copy of which was furnished to me by Professor George Arms, is in the Howells letter file of George Arms, William M. Gibson, and Frederic C. Marston, Jr. Point of View in Landlord at Lion’s Head 73 thought at first would be necessary: his picture of the mountain keeps coming out not just right; though he keeps trying through the years to get it. Struggling one afternoon to get his picture just right in a chang¬ ing afternoon light, but succeeding only in getting his canvas “into such a state that he alone could have found it much more intelligible than his palette,” Westover is interrupted by young Jeff Durgin intently looking on over the artist’s shoulder. Jeff complains that he does not think Westover’s picture of the mountain “looks very much like it.” Amused and flattered by this, as he believes, “popular censure” speaking in Jeff, Westover condescendingly suggests that perhaps Jeff does not know about such things. When Jeff stub¬ bornly replies, “I know what I see,” Westover answers that he doubts it. The incident not only establishes a significant dif¬ ference in point of view between Westover and Jeff that is com¬ plexly developed throughout the novel, it serves to alert us to larger aesthetic and moral concerns in Howells’s story. Whether it be Lion’s Head or Jeff Durgin, what is made of them is intimately related to the person who does the making. The subject-object relationship, in other words, is seen in Howells’s novel as dy¬ namically interactive, constituting what the novelist recognized as a complicity of being in which the reality of the subject-object relationship is made in active experience. The success of West- over’s repeated attempts to get Lion’s Head just right is directly dependent on how much of the mountain (and Jeff) he is able to see through himself. It is interesting and amusing in connection with this to reflect that Strether, presumably modeled after Howells, was put to a similar test by James \n The Ambassadors some years later. By depicting Jeff Durgin from different points of view, and by demonstrating that the act of seeing (and judging) is relative to the person who does the seeing, Howells suggests that no perception of all of Jeff is humanly possible. Westover’s pressing Jeff to ac¬ cept full responsibility for his actions is thus seen as approaching a form of mistaken self-importance in view of Jeff’s mixed condition¬ ality as shown in the novel. As opposed to Westover’s view of Jeff, however, another possible one is entertained by Mr. Whitwell, a neighbor of the Durgins. Something of a Yankee philosopher, Whitwell has a quizzical but sharp intelligence which has the 74 William McMurray effect of whittling Westover’s sober moralizing about Jeff down to a more human size. Talking with Westover about Jeff’s teasing of httlc Cynthia Whitwell, for example, Whitwell proposes: “I don’t suppose a fellow’s so much to blame, if he’s got the devil in him, as what the devil is.” Westover (already showing a temperamental aversion for Jeff and an attraction to Cynthia, whom he is ready to marry in the end), tends to feel that it is “original sin” with Jeff himself. Whitwell guesses though that it is not original sin: Jeff’s maternal grandfather, a scoundrel who had kept a tavern over on the west side of Lion’s Head, had always been on the “mean side” of any question. Whitwell’s tendency to an open view of things, as opposed to Westover’s more closed one, is demonstrated also in regard to the artist’s portrait of Lion’s Head Mountain. When neighbors come to watch the artist at work (and Jeff’s pleas¬ ure at playing host to them hints at his emergence in the end as the landlord at Lion’s Head Hotel), there is no question in their minds but one of “likeness; all finer facts were far from them; they wished to see how good a portrait Westover had made, and some of them consoled him with the suggestion that the likeness would come out more when the picture got dry.” Whitwell, acting in a way that is characteristic for him, attempts “a larger view of the artist’s work,” suggesting to Westover that “you could not always get a thing hke that just right the first time, and that you had to keep trying till you did get it; but it paid in the end” (p. 36). Howells, interesting¬ ly, tells in the preface to the Library Edition of his novel (p. viii) how he kept trying to “get” his story and felt that it did pay in the end. Growing into a stalwart young man of some promise (how it is fulfilled is the main line of the story), Jeff, because his mother is ambitious for him and because it pleases Cynthia, to whom he has become vaguely engaged, goes off to college. At Harvard and in Boston, the powerful country boy (“his yeomanly vigor and force,” Westover sees, “threaten the more worldly conceptions of the tailor with danger”) is regarded as a “jay,” an outsider. At a tea for the Vostrands in his Boston studio, Westover is asked by one lady: who “was your friend who ought to have worn a lion-skin and carried a club” ? Seen now from a proper Bostonian point of view, Jeff, and his story, are matter for the novelist of manners. Point of View in Landlord at Lion’s Head 75 Jeff’s affair of sorts with the bored Boston socialite Bessie Lynde (“He’s a riddle, and I’m all the time guessing at him,” she remarks to a girl friend) precipitates his break with Cynthia. Though West- over, shocked that Jeff is not “able to see” the wrongness of his actions, insists that it is Jeff’s duty to break off with Cynthia, the causes of that break as it happens in Howells’s novel are more complete than Westover is able to see. Another time, when Bessie Lynde’s alcoholic brother, Alan, gets drunk at a party with Jeff in attendance, Westover blames Jeff. Jeff argues that it may be so from Westover’s “point of view,” which assumes “that everything is done from a purpose, or that a thing is intended because it’s done.” As Jeff sees it, “most things in this world are not thought about, and not intended. They happen, just as much as the other things that we call accidents.” Later, when Whitwell asks whether Jeff has been up to “any deviltry” lately, Westover says: “Nothing that I can call intentional.” Whitwell wants to know, though, what Jeff has done. After Westover tells him about the Alan Lynde incident, Whitwell, satisfied that Jeff had held no grudge against Lynde, tentatively concludes that “it might have been an accident” (pp. 264-265). Jeff’s meaning is both single and multiple when seen in con¬ texts that are particular and accumulative in the novel. For ex¬ ample, when he takes Bessie Lynde in his arms and kisses her, Jeff, in his crude strength, may be seen in terms of sexual energy; but in that Jeff is linked with Lion’s Head Mountain, his energy suggests some kind of ultimate life-force in Nature. Again, be¬ cause Jeff’s full name is Thomas Jefferson Durgin, his energy may be taken to represent man’s thrust toward freedom over against such restrictions as the society of a Bessie Lynde would impose. Standing for a social form exhausted by its own rigidity, Bessie Lynde is incapable of containing Jeff’s “power,” his need to shape himself in life’s give and take. Fulfilment for Jeff comes in his union with Genevieve Vostrand, whose forced marriage with a member of an effete aristocratic Italian family failed, though she bore a child. Paralleling this development in Jeff’s life is his emergence as the successful landlord at Lion’s Head Hotel, a build¬ ing, Whitwell admiringly notes to a disapproving Westover, styled in the manner of the Renaissance. 76 William McMurray Howells saw human existence as a complicity of self and other, an organic inclusiveness in which self and other interacted to create a multiple reality in a changing and continuing experience. A version of this idea is given by Jeff late in the novel. As he begins now to see himself, Jeff sees that self by reason of its relation to others. Life had, so far, not been what he meant it, and just now it occurred to him that he might not have wholly made it what it had been. It seemed to him that a good many other people had come in and taken a hand in making his own life what it had been; and if he had meddled with theirs more than he was wanted, it was about an even thing. As far as he could make out, he was a sort of ingredient in the general mixture. He had probably done his share of the flavoring, but he had had very htde to do with the mixing. There were different ways of looking at the thing. Westover had his way, but it struck Jeff that it put too much responsibility on the ingredient, and too little on the power that chose it. He believed that he could prove a clear case in his own favor, as far as the question of final justice was concerned, but he had no complaints to make. Things had fallen out very much to his mind. He was the Landlord at Lion’s Head, at last. . . . (p. 364) Jeff comes into his own at the last, but that it is his own, as Westover urges, is shown as problematic in Howells’s novel. Near the end, Westover, Jeremiah-like, prophesies that, according to the certain moral government in things, Jeff Durgin “will reap what he has sown.” The problem is to know just what Jeff has sown. Whitwell, striking an optimistic note, suggests that Jeff may be a better person now than when he was a boy, that he may have changed in heart. As evidence for this possibility, he recalls how Jeff, still smarting from a whiplashing once administered him by Alan Lynde, afterward gave up vengeance on Lynde in a moment of rage to kill him. As Jeff himself remembered it later, his mercy toward Lynde then was a “mystery he did not try to solve.” Re¬ lenting somewhat, Westover concedes that perhaps “we’re all broken shafts, here.” After all, he continues, there may be something in that “old hypothesis of another life, a world where there is room enough and time enough for all the beginnings of this to complete themselves—” (p. 400). So far as the question of final justice is concerned, Jeff feels that he could prove a “clear” case for himself; and where it is a question Point of View in Landlord at Lion’s Head 77 of final justice, he may be right. The complicity of his situation as depicted in Howells’s novel, however, admits of no “clear” case either for or against Jeff, Westover notwithstanding. Essendally conservative, one who cherishes the old order, Westover is sensitive to all that threatens life’s conventional decencies as he sees them. “He was an artist, and he had always been a bohemian, but at heart he was philistine and bourgeois. His ideal was a settlement, a fixed habitation, a stated existence, a home where he could work constantly in an air of affection, and unselfishly do his part to make his home happy” (p. 402). It is not surprising in the end that Westover rather than Jeff gets Cynthia Whitwell, “the pure and lovely Puritan maid,” as Mr. Cady calls her. It may be said that Cynthia’s portrait (which Westover paints) turns out to be his real picture of Lion’s Head; for what his experience has come to mean for him is the discovery of his love for Cynthia. Whitwell’s “larger view” of Jeff balances Westover’s more closed one in Howells’s novel and keeps intact the novelist’s attempt to get his picture, to paint Jeff in the fulness of his mixed being. Seeing Jeff and all existence as intrinsically mixed, Howells reveals him¬ self to be antipuritan in a profound way. In his fiction, early and late, Howells saw reality as also mixed: rather than something fixed, single, and pure, reality, he found, was complex, multiple, and pragmatically made by men in their continuing experience, in their growing perception of the world and of themselves. What Lion’s Head Mountain or Jeff Durgin may be in any final reality is that element of the unknown pervading man’s reality; it is the necessary shadow of his seeing. Writing about Howells’s novel, Oscar Firkins interestingly observed: “The story ... is compara¬ tively rich in effective incident, though when, after emergence from the final exit, you turn back to survey the edifice, the edifice has vanished. There is cohesion, but there is no perspective.”® Firkins here unconsciously pays tribute to Howells’s artistry in manipulating point of view to create the Mountain that is and is not there and which remains a riddle “as imperative and importunate as the Great Stone Face itself.” In Hawthorne’s story, Ernest all his life looks for the man born in the image of the Great Stone Face, an image of the divine. Before we learn that Ernest is himself that man by reason of his faith, he thinks to have found him in a poet ® Oscar W. Firkins, William Dean Howells, A Study (Cambridge, Mass., 1924), p. 184. 78 William McMurray whose works he has come to love. When the poet denies it, Ernest queries whether the thoughts in his poetry are not divine. “They have a strain of divinity,” replied the poet. “You can hear in them the far-off echo of a heavenly song. But my life, dear Ernest, has not corresponded with my thoughts. I have had grand dreams, but they have been only dreams, because I have Hved—and that, too, by my own choice—among poor and mean reahdes.” In The Landlord at Lion's Head, Howells does not say more than the poet. Marcia Gaylord’s Electra Complex; A Footnote to Sex in Howells Kermit Vanderbilt L udwig Lewisohn, that vigorous Freudian of a past era, was the critic logically qualified to sum up many decades of abuse heaped upon William Dean Howells. In 1932, Lewisohn assailed Howells for his prudish and genteel pussy-footing around the crucial facts of life between the sexes, for his “falling into a kind of negative frenzy at the slightest suggestion of man’s mammalian nature and hence [his being] as obsessed by sex as a fighting prohibitionist is by alcohol.” But once, in A Modern Instance, wrote Lewisohn with stinting praise, “Howells struck a deeper and more impassioned note ... than in any work before or after.” What Lewisohn responded to most heartily was the portrait of Marcia Gaylord, whom he de¬ scribed as “a predatory and possessive female of a peculiarly danger¬ ous and noxious kind, drawn with the most vivid energy and im¬ passioned skill—an energy and skill that could spring from nothing less than an experience, personal or intimately vicarious, of the type.”' Since Lewisohn, a number of critics have commented briefly, and more perceptively, on the subject of sex in Howells, with particular mention of the strongly passionate nature—even sexuality—of the heroine of A Modern Instance. Everett Carter notes, and then steps gingerly away from, the significant moment early in the novel when Marcia Gaylord stoops to kiss the doorknob on which Bartley Hubbard’s hand had rested seconds before.^ Edwin Cady has also remarked, with similar reserve, that Marcia appears to have been conceived as an unusually warm-blooded young lady: “Typical of Marcia as a passionate woman is the fact that at moments of stress she blushes, or flushes, with striking color. ... It is this force, un¬ controlled, that makes her Bartley’s victim.”® ^ Expression in America (New York, 1932), pp. 244, 249. * Howells and the Age of Realism (Philadelphia, 1954), p. 151. *The Road to Realism (Syracuse, 1956), p. 214. See also Cady, The Realist at War 8 o Kermit Vanderbilt More recently, William Gibson has gone somewhat further into the complex psychology of Howells’s heroine: Marcia’s violent outbursts of anger and her jealous accusations of infidelity are partly to be understood in terms of her strong tie to her father, whom she clearly resembles in her aquiline profile and more subtly resembles in her feelings and actions. These outbursts are also due to a rich emotional nature and to a strong sexual drive which is matched neither in intensity or timing to the easier, less fixed and centered libido of Bartley.^ Mr. Gibson, we notice, does not choose to link Marcia’s “strong tie to her father” with her “strong sexual drive.” Yet one is strongly tempted to make just such a connection. For Howells, in suggesting Marcia’s sexual passions and inhibitions, appears to be giving us an astonishingly accurate description of the sexual neurosis which Carl Jung termed the “Electra complex.”® The reader can, in fact, take a certain courage in this suspicion from the knowledge that Howells, a deeply troubled man in the i88o’s (he suffered several break¬ downs), admitted a few years after A Modern Instance his interest in the workings of the human subconscious and in the interpretation of dreams.® I believe that one can find convincing evidence that Howells quite clearly was implying that Marcia Gaylord was sub¬ consciously infatuated with her father and, the counterpart, that she also rejected her mother. Lewisohn may rightly have guessed that Howells might have had a “personal or intimately vicarious” experience with a Marcia Gaylord. If so, Howells then went on to trust his own expert intuitions about the feminine psyche, to (Syracuse, 1958), especially pp. 121-128, for valuble general comments on Howells and pre-Freudianism. * A Modern Instance, cd. with an introduction and notes by William M. Gibson (Boston, 1957, Riverside edition), p. xvi. All subsequent quotations from the novel are taken from this edition. “In his “Versuch einer Darstellung der psychoanalytischen Theorie,” 1913. Freud objected to the term, asserting that it implied an equivalent sexual pattern in both sexes. Freud maintained that the early castration complex behaved differently in boys from that in girls, and that this difference caused Oedipus (Electra) feelings to develop later in girls than the Oedipus feelings in boys. Professional antipathy is probably involved here; having given this technical qualification of the girl’s sexual attraction to the father, Freud could as well have adopted Jung’s term. Certainly it avoids the momentary confusion of Freud’s “feminine Oedipus complex.” See The Complete Psychological Wor\s of Sigmund Freud, translated from the German under the general editorship of James Strachey, London, 1955, XVIII (1920-1922), 155 n.; 1961, XXI (1927-1931), 229-230. “ See Everett S. Carter, “The Palpitating Divan,” College English, XI, 427-428 (May, 1950). Marcia Gaylord’s Electra Complex 8 i draw the most intense portrait of a young woman to appear in any of his novels. In the characterization of Marcia, Howells was also probing certain troublesome questions about moral freedom in an age when reUgious faith was crumbhng. I In the opening episode of A Modern Instance, Bartley Hubbard has just delivered Marcia Gaylord to her living room after an evening date on a sleighride. After having made a few mildly flirtatious pleasantries, Bartley prepares to leave. Howells tells us that Bartley’s subtle flattery has “filled [Marcia’s] brain like wine. She moved dizzily as she took up the lamp to light him to the door” (p. lo). Then, as young men will, Bartley manufactures a pretext to bestow a surprise kiss on the young lady. Howells describes Marcia’s extreme response: “. . . she panted; and after the door had closed upon him, she stooped and kissed the knob on which his hand had rested” (p. lo). As she turns, “she started to see her father coming down the stairs with a candle in his hand” (p. lo). Like an avenging angel, he “looked sharply down into her uplifted face” (p. ii). Howells next proceeds to point out the close physical resemblances between father and daughter. The scene then ends with this confrontation: “Marcia,” he asked, grimly, “are you engaged to Bartley Hubbard?” The blood flashed up from her heart into her face like fire, and then, as suddenly, fell back again, and left her white. She let her head droop and turn, till her eyes were wholly averted from him, and she did not speak. He closed the door behind him, and she went upstairs to her own room; in her shame, she seemed to herself to crawl thither, with her father’s glance burning upon her. (p. ii, my italics) Several matters are noteworthy in this early scene. Quite clearly we are to believe that this has been the first kiss of Marcia’s Vic¬ torian maidenhood (she has never been engaged). Her impassioned reaction can be explained, first, as the release of strong desires which have, up to this point in her life, been stored up and repressed. Equally significant is that Howells brings the father large upon the scene at this crucial moment in her emotional life, describes the closeness of their physical similarity, and concludes the scene with her imagining his “glance burning upon her.” A minimum 82 Kermit Vanderbilt Freudian reading of the scene (possible symbolism of the doorknob and the candle not pursued) can go something like this: a powerful craving for affection, previously inhibited and unsatisfied because directed toward the father—an impossible source of fulfilment physically—has, for the first time, been guiltily unleashed and directed toward a rival male, Bartley Hubbard. (On the dramatic level, the scene also is a brilliantly handled foreshadowing of the main conflict in the story, which will center on Marcia, Bartley, and the father. The scene echoes later in our memory when it becomes virtually re-enacted during the divorce action, to give the novel both a formal symmetry and dramatic inevitability.) Subsequent passages help to widen the implications of this scene and, ultimately, to suggest the (pre-) Freudian complexion of the entire novel. First, regarding Marcia’s attachment to her father. After their betrothal, Bartley discovers a ring on Marcia’s finger: “Ah, ha!” he said, after a while. “Who gave you this ring, Miss Gaylord?” “Father, Christmas before last,” she promptly answered, without moving. “I’m glad you asked,” she murmured, in a lower voice, full of pride in the maiden love she could give him. “There’s never been any one but you, or the thought of any one.” She suddenly started away. (P- 36) And more exphcitly. Her mother left her training almost wholly to her father; . . . and she held aloof from them both in their mutual relations, with mildly critical reserves. They spoiled each other, as father and daughter are apt to do when left to themselves. . . . She was passionate, but she was generous; and if she showed a jealous temperament that must hereafter make her unhappy, for the time being it charmed and flattered her father to have her so fond of him that she could not endure any rivalry in his affection. (P- 72) (The matter of jealousy in the Electra complex, and in the novel, will be returned to.) The couple, confused and unprepared for a marriage based largely on sexual attraction, soon elope to Boston. Presently Squire Gaylord, with frowning disapproval, comes alone to visit the newlyweds. He is about to leave. “Why father! Are you going to leave me?” she faltered. He smiled in melancholy irony at the bewilderment, the childish Marcia Gaylord’s Electra Complex 83 forgetfulness of all the circumstances, which her words expressed. “Oh, no! I’m going to take you with me.” (p. 133) The scene closes with Bartley and Marcia exchanging words, he sadistically taunting her about his disapproving father-in-law: “Did he come to take you home with him.? Why didn’t you go.?” The brutal words had hardly escaped him when he ran to her as if he would arrest them before their sense should pierce her heart. She thrust him back with a stiffly extended arm. “Keep away! Don’t touch me!” She walked by him up the stairs without looking round at him, and he heard her close their door and lock it. (p. 134) When the baby is born, Marcia is anxious to see her father. She asks Bartley to write a letter requesting that her mother come to Boston. He knows better: “I will ask your father to come with her” (p. 186). She then lets slip the following postdelivery senti¬ ment: “Father was the first one I thought of—after you, Bartley. It seems to me as if baby came half to show me how unfeeling I had been to him. Of course. I’m not sorry I ran away and asked you to take me back, for I couldn’t have had you if I hadn’t done it; but I never realized before how cruel it was to father. He always made such a pet of me; and I know that he thought he was acting for the best.” (pp. 186-187) Bartley counters (with emotions one must partly guess at) by sug¬ gesting that the baby should be named after Squire Gaylord. “‘Bartley Hubbard,’ she cried, ‘you’re the best man in the world!’ ‘Oh, no! Only the second-best,’ suggested Bartley” (p. 188). After the Squire’s visit (again alone) to see the new baby. They both undeniably felt freer now that he was gone. Bartley stayed longer than he ought from his work, in tacit celebration of the Squire’s departure, and they were very merry together; but when he left her, Marcia called for her baby, and gathering it close to her heart, sighed over it, “Poor father! poor father!” (p. 194) Paralleling the daughter’s strong sexual attachment to the father in the Electra complex is her rejection of the mother. Again, Howells has given what appear to be rather obvious and consistent hints of his intention. Mrs. Gaylord is first described rather harmlessly, in terms reminiscent of the mother of Daisy Miller. She has an “awe of her daughter and her judgments which is one 84 Kermit Vanderbilt of the pathetic idiosyncrasies of a certain class of American mothers” (p. 29). But Howells soon goes beyond social history to indicate that, in a subtler form, far more is involved in this relationship between mother and daughter. In a scene before the marriage, Marcia enters the room. Mrs. Gaylord shrank back, and then slipped round her daughter and vanished. The girl took no notice of her mother, but went and sat down on her father’s knee, throwing her arms round his neck, and dropping her haggard face on his shoulder, (p. 74) After the elopement, Marcia has banished her mother almost en¬ tirely from memory, barely asking about her when the father comes to Boston alone. She refuses to go home when her mother becomes ill (Marcia at this time, of course, is also distracted by Bartley’s desertion). She finally arrives just before the mother’s death, accepts it with no apparent emotion, and brings the father back to live with her in Boston.^ Up to this point, one can not help being struck by the interesting resemblances between the case of Marcia Gaylord and Freud’s celebrated, and far more bizarre, case of Dora, reported in his “Analysis of a Case of Hysteria” (1905). Freud soon recognized in his analysis of Dora the obverse of what he had previously dis¬ covered in the male Oedipus complex. He called Dora’s abnormal sexual attraction to the father a characteristic of “those children whose constitution marks them down for a neurosis, who develop prematurely and have a craving for love” (p. 56).® Dora’s mother was, somewhat like Marcia’s, a woman with “ ‘housewife’s psy¬ chosis.’ ” “The daughter looked down on her mother and used to criticize her mercilessly, and she had withdrawn completely from ’’ Although I cannot fully demonstrate it here, I want to insist that the density of A Modern Instance is ultimately achieved through the skill with which Howells was able to relate the characters’ emotional maladjustments to powerful external forces set loose in this period of radical dislocation in American life. To cite just one example, the shattering impact of modern science upon religion. Marcia’s lack of a vital religion to absorb (sublimate) some of her natural passions plays a part in her psychology, as she dimly comes to recognize during conversation with Mrs. Halleck (p. 202). Mr. Cady is perceptive here. He describes Marcia as “a lushly emotional creature whom the decay of up-country religion into arid free thought (embodied in tough old Squire Gaylord, her father) has left with no resources of civilization to discipline or channel her passions” {Jhe Road to Realism, p. 209). The point not made here is that Marcia's undisciplined passions have been channeled—to the father. ° Page numbers refer to The Complete Psychological Worlds, London, 1953, VII (1901- 1905). Marcia Gaylord’s Electra Complex 85 her influence” (p. 20). When Dora became attracted to another man, she retreated to her love for her father “in order to protect herself against the feelings of love which were constantly pressing forward into consciousness” (p. 58). Marcia’s periodic frigidity is clearly hinted at in the novel, and can be related, at least in part, to the same cause. At the culmination of the quarrel after her father’s first visit to Boston, in the passage previously quoted, she stiffly marches up the stairs, and Bartley hears her “close their door and lock it.” (Here again is a vivid instance of the symbolic strategies which Howells had to devise in suggesting sexual rela¬ tionships in an age when reigning literary taboos prevented more open explication.) Temperamentally Dora was, for various com¬ plicated homosexual and heterosexual reasons, “almost incessantly a prey to the most embittered jealousy” (p. 58). We have already seen Howells’s comment about the passionate jealousy which Marcia showed toward all rivals for her father’s affection. It anticipates her neurotic accusadons of infidelity whenever Bartley pays his harmless, unbiological attentions to other women. Projected jealousy, as Freud puts it, suggests itself here; Marcia’s suppressed guilt over her failure to give Bartley undivided love has led her to project faithlessness on to him. Her hysterical insinuations that he has committed adultery with Hannah Morrison, in fact, cause the final rupture of their marriage and precipitate his departure from Boston. Again, how can Marcia love the man whom her beloved father so roundly condemns? Freud’s Dora presented a similar problem. Freud asserts that in such instances, “thoughts in the unconscious live very comfortably side by side, and even contraries get on together without disputes—a state of things which persists often enough even in the conscious” (p. 61). Modern psychology further reveals that daughters with the sexual dis¬ turbances of a Dora or a Marcia Gaylord will be attracted to a man either very similar to the father or, at the other extreme (as with Bartley Hubbard), very dissimilar. Marcia frequently nags Bartley to become a lawyer—the profession of Squire Gaylord. But her marrying a man so dissimilar to her father also allows certain emotional “contraries to get on together without disputes”—at least for brief periods at a time. To return to the final portion of A Modern Instance after Bartley’s desertion. Many Howells readers have been disappointed. 86 Kermit Vanderbilt not to say baffled, by his relentless handling of the divorce chapters. Perhaps we can find one last instructive parallel in Freud’s “Case of Hysteria.” Freud concludes the case of Dora by remarking hope¬ fully about two dreams which he had analyzed late in her treat¬ ment: Just as the first dream represented her turning away from the man she loved to her father—that is to say, her flight from life into disease— so the second dream announced that she was about to tear herself free from her father and had been reclaimed once more by the reahties of hfe. (p. 122) When Marcia feels the full impact of Bartley’s leaving her, she begins to undergo a transformation. She refuses to go home to her father when he now comes to Boston, and she shows some hope¬ ful signs that she is gaining some insight into her neurosis: The old man had to endure talk of Bartley to which all her former praises were as refreshing shadows of defamation. She required him to agree with everything she said, and he could not refuse; she reproached him for being with herself the cause of all Bartley’s errors, and he had to bear it without protest. At the end he could say nothing but “Better come home with me, Marcia,” and he suffered in meekness the indignation with which she rebuked him: “1 will stay in Bartley’s house till he comes back to me. If he is dead, I will die here.” (p. 313) Her hysteria about Bartley’s eventual return notwithstanding, one feels that she finally may become, to borrow Freud’s words, “re¬ claimed once more by the realities of life.” Then Bartley’s divorce notice from Indiana arrives. To end the novel, Howells did not devise for the young couple a reconciliation and new start in the West—an ending pleasantly tinged with sentiment and American myth. Instead, and with brutal honesty, he completed the predestined tragedy. Marcia emerges from her bewilderment, and Howells rings in, like a leitmotif, the prophetic opening scene. Marcia’s features are again compared to her father’s. She goes West with her father, who, playing the avenging role of the opening love scene, prosecutes the divorce trial, and lays open the old wounds with a fury that closes all possible avenues of reunion. Father, daughter, and child (the father’s namesake) return to the old home in Maine. Even more strongly than Freud’s Dora, who had at times “identified Marcia Gaylord’s Electra Complex 87 herself with her mother by means of slight symptoms and peculi¬ arities of manner” (p. 75), Marcia “kept herself closely housed, and saw no one whom she was not forced to see,” She had re¬ gressed to the point where she had become “as queer as her mother” (p. 358). In the novel, and in the life of Marcia Gaylord, Howells had given his readers a modern instance of a similar tragic fate which the ancient oracle had foretold to the unlucky Oedipus centuries before. II Given the foregoing pattern of inevitability, the ending of A Modern Instance can more satisfactorily stand up against Lewisohn’s (Freudian!) objection to “the inhuman priggishness” with which Howells chose to dispatch Bartley and to drive Marcia into seclusion with her father and child.® More difficult to answer is Professor Cady’s objection to the ending as an “artistic failure— in fully and clearly presenting the final states of being at which the main characters arrive—linked with an intellectual failure to thinks through to their last conclusions the ideas for which the main body of the novel’s drama stood.”^® Assuming that Howells was quite conscious of the neurosis he seems to have been suggesting in the novel, we know that he would not have dared to give his nine¬ teenth-century audience a more explicit interpretation of Marcia’s “final state of being”—her unrecognized feelings of sexual attach¬ ment to her father. And it is her final state of being that the reader is primarily interested in.“ Professor Cady’s other criticism, that Howells failed intellectually to clarify and resolve “the ideas for * Expression in America, p. 249. The Road to Realism, p. 208. Regarding Squire Gaylord, his highly emotional performance at the divorce trial has often been dismissed as a melodramatic flaw in the ending of the novel. Yet Howells may have been displaying here some of the emotions previously held in check by Marcia’s father. His motives in the story seem to be suspect more than once. Although he en¬ courages Marcia, early in the marriage, to be a good wife, he continues to enjoy her attentions to him. The neglected Mrs. Gaylord, we are told, resents this close relation¬ ship "with that curious jealousy a wife feels for her husband’s indulgence of their daughter” (p. 232). Squire Gaylord also prefers to believe that Bartley has been consistently unfaithful, although the reader knows better. At the divorce trial, when Marcia objects to his wildly vindictive case against Bartley, Squire Gaylord “fixed a ghastly, bewildered look upon his daughter, and fell forward across the table at which he stood” (p. 355). Howells’s sparing analysis here and afterward could suggest the necessary reticence in explaining Squire Gaylord’s final “state of being,” if the reasons lay in an incest syndrome within the house of Gaylord. 88 Kermit Vanderbilt which the main body of the novel’s drama stood” may be justly charged. One may question, however, whether the main “ideas” in the novel—what is essentially modern Greek tragedy in a man¬ ner I have only begun to suggest here—have ever been clearly defined by Howells biographers and critics.^^ Marcia Gaylord is imprisoned in a neurotic dilemma which underscores and helps to define the larger problem of the novel, the question of moral freedom in a post-Darwinian, post-Comteian, technological society. If Howells failed to “think through” this philosophical conflict— and I believe that he did fail—the reasons were, I suspect, closely related to the causes for “the long worry and sleeplessness” which led to his seven-week breakdown during the writing of the novel. That A Modern Instance is a revelation of Howells’s religious crisis, and a Greek tragedy reflecting American civilization in the late nineteenth century, still remains to be demonstrated. His disturb¬ ing insights into the character of Marcia Gaylord suggest a part of that story. Howells’s portrait of this modern American wife stands as an impressive pioneering study in sexual neurosis. ^“Howells had previously read Greek tragedy in translation. In the spring of 1875, he attended a performance of Euripides’ Medea in Boston. He responded excitedly to the play, seeing it as “an Indiana divorce case,” and wrote to Charles Eliot Norton the next year that he had begun his “New Medea.” But the novel foundered for five years. Why? A satisfactory account of the reasons for postponement needs to be written. Everett Carter, interestingly enough, writes that the play Howells saw in 1875 was Elekjra {Howells and the Age of Realism, p. 108). The Function of Setting in Howells’s The Landlord at Lion’s Head Mary C. Sullivan, RSM TN HIS RECENT EVALUATION of the wofk of Howclls’s later years, Edwin Cady quotes an 1896 conversation between Henry James and Owen Wister. Of The Landlord at Lions Head, which had been currently serialized in Harper s and in the London Illustrated News, James said in his usual provocative manner: “I think it’s possible—yes, I’ll go as far as possible—that—that six-and-a-half Americans know how good it is.”‘ Wister was allowed to pride himself on his being the “half.” From its first publication. The Landlord has been universally judged to be one of Howells’s best novels. Delmar Cooke goes so far as to call it Howells’s “master novel,” O. W. Firkins sees it as one of the two “summits” among Howells’s later novels, and Cady himself labels it “unquestionably first class.” If the novel possesses, as these superlatives would imply, some of the finest evidence of its author’s fictional abilities, then this work has suffered undeserved neglect on the part of literary critics. Slightly more than seventeen pages of published critical evalua¬ tion have appeared, and much of that has been concerned with an analysis of moral meaning rather than with a careful scrutiny of the structural and textural artistry of the work. Even the character¬ ization of Jeff, which is probably the outstanding success of The Landlord, has been only superficially probed. However, of all the artistic excellences of the novel that which seems to have been most regretfully bypassed is that which is, in some respects, its most unifying and pervasively meaningful element: the setting. Firkins speaks of The Landlord at Lions Head as “the most robust of all the novels.” Whence comes this virility of conception and execution? Surely the realistic portrayal of Jeff Durgin is a 'Edwin H. Cady, The Realist at War: The Mature Years of William Dean Howells, i88yig20 (Syracuse, 1958), p. 229. 90 Mary C. Sullivan masterpiece of strength and force but its vigor is in fact drawn from association with the more basic seat of power in the novel: the physical setting—in particular, the massive granite image of the crouching lion which nature has formed on the top of a distant mountain, and which can be seen from the New England mountain¬ side where the Durgin and Whitwell farms are located and where most of the significant action of the novel takes place. The Lion’s Head is the dominant scene and symbol in the novel. As a place which is never visited but always seen, it performs, together with the Durgin farm, certain indispensable functions in the novel. As the most heavily freighted area of the setting, this strange phenomenon exerts a profound artistic influence on the mood, action, characterization, and moral meaning of The Landlord. It is not extravagant for one to attach considerable importance to the Lion’s Head. Howells himself was tremendously impressed by his first vision of it! “I suppose the origin of this novel may be traced to a fact of a fortnight’s sojourn on the western shore of Lake Champlain in the summer of 1891. Across the water in the State of Vermont I had constantly before my eyes a majestic mountain form which the earlier French pioneers had named Le Lion Couchant .... It really looked hke a sleeping fion; the head was especially definite; and when, in the course of some ten years, I found the scheme for a story about a summer hotel which I had long meant to write, this image suggested the name of The Land¬ lord at Lion's Head. I gave the title to my unwritten novel at once and never wished to change it, but rejoiced in the certainty that, whatever the novel turned out to be, the title could not be better.”^ The Landlord is a spiritual tragedy. Its surface action is illus¬ trative rather than causal. The novel was Howells’s strongest effort toward showing that just as spiritual goodness does not neces¬ sarily receive material reward in this world, so spiritual badness does not inevitably reap chastisement on this side of death. Because the novel was conceived along “interior” lines, its main interest hes in our gradually heightened perception of the true character and moral worth of Jeff Durgin. This sensitive awareness of his essential nature is achieved primarily and most artistically through the inter¬ play of character and setting. We grow to know him as he really “William Dean Howells, The Landlord at Lion's Head (New York, 1896, 1911), p. vii. All subsequent references to the novel will be to this edition. Italics in subsequent quotations are mine. Setting in Landlord at Lion’s Head 91 is through recognition of well-delineated symptoms revelatory of his true character, especially as those symptoms are prophesied, echoed, and emphasized by similar qualities of the Lion’s Head. Jeff Durgin’s tragedy does not occur in the novel as a single event or climactic act; his tragedy is a condition, a state of nature, a “sheer incapacity for good,”^ indeed, for any moral responsibility. Since his tragedy is of this sort, description, symbol, and imagery are very important to a profound appreciation of the totality of the novel’s deepest meaning because the movement of the work is a psychological one rather than a plotted external progression, and its abstract “action” is best represented through metaphorical rela¬ tions with the setting. The functions of the Lion’s Head are fourfold: i) it is used to create a mood of mystery, uncertainty, antithesis, and dormant destructiveness; 2) the paintings Westover makes of it and its scenic attractiveness to summer vacationers provide a structural basis for the action of the novel; 3) the “personality” of the crouching granite lion is used to delineate character by contrast, reaction, and associa¬ tion; and finally 4) the moral force with which the Lion’s Head is endowed helps Howells to enunciate his ethic in a manner that is wholly unobtrusive. I A proper understanding of the relation of this strange setting to the rest of the novel demands that one comprehend the “person¬ ality” of the Lion’s Head in all its subtle nuances and puzzling indefiniteness. The very first paragraph of the novel suggests the well-defined but mist-covered nature of the “sleeping lion”: its “flanks and haunches were vaguely distinguished,” its “mighty head . . . was boldly sculptured,” and “the vast paws stretched before it.” The clear outline of the head is obscured in winter by the snows, and at other seasons by clouds that “deformed it, or hid it.” As part of the landscape its aspect is “imperative and importunate” —the region around it “primitively solitary and savage.” Sight¬ seers come to “wonder at it and mock at it, according to their several makes and moods,” and echoes retort from the granite base. The trees and hills and all the variegated terrain break “like a baffled sea around the Lion’s Head.” The reader senses the veiled ® Delmar G. Cooke, William Dean Howells: A Critical Study (New York, 1922), p. 250. 92 Mary C. Sullivan animal power and the amorality that characterize this image—he feels the threat of something unreasoning and unrevealed. As the novel unfolds these and other aspects of this phenomenon and its situation are heightened or revealed as “the light darken[s] on the lonely heights and in the lonely depths around” (p. 22). When the artist Westover looked out at the Lion’s Head in the moonlight “it slumbered as if with the sleep of centuries—austere, august. The moon-rays seemed to break and splinter on the outline of the lion-shape and left all the mighty mass black below” (p. 57). The mountaintop always seemed to be hidden by “a cloud-wreath trying to hft itself from the summit”: “In the effort it thinned away to transparency in places; in others, it tore its frail texture asunder and let parts of the mountain show through; then the fragments knitted themselves loosely together, and the vapor lay again in dreamy quiescence” (p. 95). Westover once made a study of Lion’s Head “in the morning light after the cloud lifted from it,” for “he loved the mountain, and he was always finding something new in it. He was now see¬ ing it inwardly with so exclusive a vision that he had no eyes” for pretty women until they were out of sight (p. 102). Something about the Lion’s Head compelled him to seek to penetrate the secret of its nature. After several chapters devoted to Jeff’s attempt to put on the garments of civilization and take his place in Boston society. West- over returns to Lion’s Head to paint the moimtain in winter. Dis¬ appointed with the incongruous “improvements” made on Lion’s Head House, he nevertheless notices at this time how the gray crags of the Lion’s Head “darkened under the pink afternoon light which was beginning to play upon its crest from the early sunset.” Contemplating it Westover fell asleep and “seemed to sleep for centuries”; he awoke “feeling coeval with Lion’s Head” (p. 257). All of this suggests the primitive and ambiguous nature of the Lion’s Head, but it also draws attention to Westover’s extreme sensitivity and perception. Just as he is attuned to the varying ap¬ pearances and the buried potentialities of the granite peak, so he is aware of the hidden forces and the unspotlighted features in the personality of Jeff Durgin. Just as Westover can read the full truth of the mountain, so he can apprehend the full truth in the man. It took only a caprice of the wind to tear “its hood of snow from Setting in Landlord at Lion’s Head 93 the mountain summit,” and a similar accident could as quickly unmask Jefil Durgin. Studying these passages which compose the “characterization” of the Lion’s Head, one may better understand the power and richness of that natural setting as it infiltrates and influences the rest of the novel. Long descriptive passages devoted to the granite phenomenon establish a mood that is specifically definable and in perfect harmony with the authorial intention of the book; the revelation of Jeff Durgin’s true character. This atmosphere is a complex of many notions and emotions. The hard, well-defined, unchanging reality of the mountaintop as opposed to the capri¬ cious, amorphous, variable aspect of the surrounding landscape sets up a conflict between permanence and change that is basic to the mood and meaning of the novel. This tension between reality and appearance, between a certain immutability of nature and evanescent evidence of something glossing that nature is the key to the under¬ standing of the “bad mixture” that is Jeff Durgin. The real Jeff is the hard, unchanging, crouching lion; but the veil of an engaging charm, the polish of a gallant effort to don Boston cultivation, the aura of intellectual maturation achieved at Harvard, and the deceiv¬ ing haze of good nature and handsome joviality encircle that dormant ferocity with a cloud that hides the true amorality and naturalistic animality of his character. Thus, the basic mood of conflict is treacherously shrouded over with moods of uncertainty and large-minded indecisiveness. However, despite this mysteriousness and the general unwilling¬ ness to be climactic or judicial, a constant threat of destructiveness haunts the development of the narrative. A latent power for vio¬ lence, a strain of meanness, submerged underground after its first manifestations in the children-scaring and apple-bombarding scenes, can at any moment ferociously reappear to the ruin of everything in its way. Dread of this irresponsible, undisciplined energy contrib¬ utes to the tragic tenor of the novel. The mood of amoral indifference which is associated with the sleeping lion and which has a prominent place in the portrayal of the landlord’s true self would seem at first to contradict any claim that a tragic atmosphere pervades the novel. For this reason the tragic and amoral moods must be analyzed in the light of one another. Strictly speaking, tragedy can occur only to a character 94 Mary C. Sullivan who is morally responsible, to a being who is capable of performing human acts, of choosing deliberately between good and bad actions. Therefore, to speak of the moral immunity surrounding the Lion’s Head, of the animal insensitivity to good and evil that rises from it and then to hnk this mood with the career of Jeff seems to deny the novel’s tragic nature. Moral immunity and tragedy, apparendy, are incompatible moods in the same novel. In the strict Aristotelian and Shakespearean senses, this is true. But if we may here loosely define tragedy as a pathetic condition of privation, a state to which something has been denied, a moral incapacity for living in a totally human manner, then Jeff Durgin is a tragic figure. However, he by no means suffers any downfall which he recognizes; he is not a victim of the treachery of others, nor does he experience any moral decline. He is what he is throughout the novel, and is, on the whole, content with his nature and his fate. Only two short-fived moments of regret mar his “success.” Consequently, the pity the reader experiences is not a sorrow shared with the protagonist but a lament from afar, a grief at the waste of so strong and lovable a nature. One feels it a shame that Jeff never acted more humanly, that he never knew he had a soul. The fear engendered by the novel is not aroused by contemplation of Jeff’s final outcome, but rather by prediction of the heartache and pain he will cause those who have anything to do with him. Very intimately bound up with this tragic mood in which the novel is steeped is the foreboding presence of the Lion’s Head across the valley. One might almost think of it as a granite monument of omnipresent Fate, a solid, imperative oracle whose very shape and silence testify to the necessity of a creature’s acting according to its nature; as Westover urges at the very end of the novel: A tree brings forth of its kind. As a man sows he reaps. It’s dead sure, pitilessly sure. Jeff Durgin sowed success, in a certain way, and he’s reaping it. . . . That kind of tree bears Dead Sea apples, after all. He sowed evil, and he must reap evil. He may never know it, but he will reap what he has sown. The dreadful thing is that others must share in his harvest, (p. 399) II Fortunately for the integrity of the novel, the setting with all its symbohc overtones is organically connected with the action of Setting in Landlord at Lion’s Head 95 the narrative. The plot inevitably and logically revolves around the Lion’s Head. In fact, the phenomenon of the granite lion is itself the initial cause of the simple sequence of events that is the story-line of The Landlord. Briefly, the Lion’s Head and the action are entwined in this way: the picturesqueness of the Lion’s Head invites Westover to paint it; his board money saves the Durgins from having to sell their farm and move west; his painting of Lion’s Head attracts vacationers in such numbers that Mrs. Durgin converts the farm into a summer hotel; the growing income from the hotel, famous for its view, sends the youngest son Jeff to Harvard where his mother hopes he will enjoy the social advantages denied to her; Harvard life does not change Jeff but does reveal the latent simi¬ larity between his true character and the granite lion crouched be¬ neath the deceptive cloud-wreath; when Jeff is unfaithful to Cynthia and vicious to Alan Lynde, Westover conceives a new disdain for him; he goes to Lion’s Head Hotel to make a winter impression of the mountain, and sees the worthwhile girl Jeff is neglecting; finally, when Cynthia refuses Jeff’s proposal, he goes off to Europe, marries Genevieve Vostrand and returns to the charred ruins of Lion’s Head Hotel with ambitious plans for a new hotel which will have all the advantages of the Lion’s Head prospect plus mod¬ ern, European improvements in hotel-keeping. One surmises that the ruin of the natural harmony between the two mountainsides will be completed by Jeff’s materialistic designs; the more success¬ ful he becomes as landlord, the more offensive will the scene be¬ come: the modern hotel facing the pristine Lion’s Head. Through the artist Westover, who functions as observer and central intelligence, the plot and setting are further linked. Since the action is illustrative rather than actively generative, the psy¬ chological insights made possible by the conscious use of setting as a vehicle for the novel’s meaning form an integral part of the novel. The enlargement of meaning thus attained is not achieved through sacrifice of unity of action, nor is it applied as decorative excrescence on the organic whole. The image of the Lion’s Head stands as an irrepressible but silent reproach to the two major move¬ ments of the action: i) the gradual evolution of the Arcadian farmhouse of the Durgins into an “ungainly” modern hotel, and 2) the ineffective process of civilizing “veneering” which so strongly 96 Mary C. Sullivan lures Jeff’s ambition in Boston and in Europe. The descriptions of the crouching lion counterpoint both rhythms and show up the basic lack of integrity in the two “evolutions.” Ill The setting of The Landlord at Lions Head functions most importantly and most beautifully as a complement to the characteri¬ zation. Jeff is Howells’s most fully-rounded and scrupulously realis¬ tic creation. The novel is wholly his, a sympathetic but unsparing unveiling of his true character. Every element in the story is ori¬ ented toward deeper perception of his nature. To this the pheno¬ menon of the Lion’s Head contributes both as a symbol and as an omnipresent point of reference. The mountaintop concretizes, or “granitizes,” what Jeff is; it is also an immutable prophecy that he will never be anything else, no matter what clouds of education, polish, or social or economic success seem to soften the angles of his essentially cruel and selfish nature. In Jeff Durgin, Howells fashions a man motivated almost exclu¬ sively by a cool pragmatism. Practical concern for his own personal welfare and success shows itself in two strong characteristics: his dominant animality which instinctively and meanly desires its own meat and pleasure; and his insensitive amorality which shows no twinge of conscience or sacred dictation of moral responsibility. Jeff’s selfish moral isolation preserves him untamed and untaught in his human contacts and in his civilizing pursuits. Yet, despite all the qualities which render Jeff despicable, Howells has managed to maintain a sympathetic characterization. The secret to his perfect balance of judgment, to the complete absence of any condemning bias on the author’s part, is the aura of un¬ certainty which shields and protects the character of Jeff Durgin. A film of moral incertitude shrouds the intentions and actions of this character, as clouds, and mist, and snow conceal the outline of the lion’s head, preventing clear-cut certainty about his good¬ ness or badness. With the subtlest realism Howells creates a character who is humanly unknowable. Between Jeff and Howells and between Jeff and the reader there exists a gap of incommunica¬ bility that Howells does not cross and that he does not allow the reader to bridge by any simplistic estimate of Jeff’s moral worth. The same mystery surrounds Jeff’s character as surrounds that Setting in Landlord at Lion’s Head 97 sacrosanct something which is in all human beings. I disagree with those critics who claim that it is obvious that Jeff’s intentions and motives are always bad. This is precisely the merit of his character¬ ization: that one cannot infallibly judge Jeff’s actions or intentions. Even when we examine his animality and amorality we are con¬ scious of the impossibility of our being certain in our evaluation, and of the unrealism of reducing a description of his nature to an analysis of two qualities. The landlord’s animal-like temperament and his moral indifference are studied not with any notion that they alone form the whole Jeff Durgin, but rather because they are qualities which he has in common with the setting out of which he rises. Yet it must be borne in mind that before, during, and after such inspection Jeff remains complex. We capture some sense of the enigma of his nature when we read of Howells’s own affec¬ tion for him: I myself liked the hero of the tale more than I have liked worthier men, perhaps because I thought I had achieved in him a true rustic New England type in contact with urban life under entirely modern con¬ ditions. What seemed to me my aesthetic success in him possibly soft¬ ened me to his ethical shortcomings; but I do not expect others to share my weakness for Jeff Durgin, whose strong, rough surname had been waiting for his personality ever since I had got it off the side of an ice-cart many years before, (p. viii) What I most prize in him ... is the realization of that anti-Puritan quality which was always vexing the heart of Puritanism, and which I had constantly felt one of the most interesting facts in my observation of New England, (p. ix) IV Howells definitely intended to portray Jeff as one in whom there were streaks of wild animal-like ferocity—an almost savage vigor of body and intensity of emotion; and streaks of hard-crusted, conscience-deadened amorality—an equally savage unconcern for moral causes and effects. But to have displayed these qualities in violent dramatic ways would have robbed the narrative of its psy¬ chological depths. For the sake of the novel, the lion could not be continually rampant. Howells’s unique success with Jeff lies precisely in this: that although there are only three small scenes which, in any measure, exhibit his leonine ferocity—the scaring of 98 Mary C. Sullivan Cynthia with the mad dog, the fiendish apple throwing, and the violent throttling of Alan Lynde—the author was able to suggest convincingly both the latent animality and the callous amorality in Jeff. Without numerous violent scenes he succeeds in making the readers accept this animalistic potency. This Howells accomplishes by means of the suggestive presence of Lion’s Head, the artistic delineation of its “personality,” and the deft use of animal imagery. He carries over to the descriptions of Jeff all the naturalistic quali¬ ties symbolized by Lion’s Head. Recurring animal imagery especially reinforces our conscious and unconscious association of Jeff with the granite lion. Through¬ out the novel he is described in terms of his strong bodily vigor and his bursting animal vitality. Even as a thirteen-year-old his hands and face were of the same “earthen cast.” As he grew older his aspect became more and more robust: Jeff Durgin’s stalwart frame was notable for strength rather than height . . . . but he was massive without being bulky. His chest was deep, his square shoulders broad, his powerful legs bore him with a back¬ ward bulge of the calves that showed through his shapely trousers; he caught up the trunks and threw them into the baggage-wagon with a swelling of the muscles on his short, thick arms which pulled his coat- sleeves from his heavy wrists and broad, short hands. [He had] a look which was not so much furtive as latent, (pp, 45-46) Remarking all this, Westover “rejoiced in the fellow’s young, manly beauty, which was very regular and sculpturesque.” In August after his first year at Harvard, Jeff “got a chance to work his way to London on a cattle-steamer.” His letters home reflected the innate bluntness and roughness of his nature: “His accounts of his travel were a mixture of crude sensations in the pres¬ ence of famous scenes and objects of interest, hard-headed observa¬ tion of the facts of life, narrow-minded misconception of conditions, and wholly intelligent and adequate study of the art of inn-keeping in city and country” (p. 80), In this “comical devil,” as Whitwell called him, there was always a “mixture” that baffled and suspended judgment. During his freshman year the dichotomy between his efforts at “civilization” and his spiritual and physical primitiveness was most apparent, Westover observed, in the way clothes seemed inappropriate for his figure: Setting in Landlord at Lion’s Head 99 In the outing dress he wore at home he was always effective, but there was something in Jeff’s figure which did not lend itself to more formal fashion; something of herculean proportion which would have marked him of a classic beauty perhaps if he had not been in clothes at all. . . . It was as if he were about to burst out of his clothes, not because he wore them tight, but because there was somehow more of the man than the citizen in him; something native, primitive, something that Westover could not find quite a word for, characterized him physically and spiritually, (p. 114) It did not take Bessie Lynde long to perceive his savage aspect: “Mr. Durgin isn’t one to inspire the casual beholder with the notion of his spiritual distincdon. His face is so rude and strong, and he has such a primitive effect in his clothes, that you feel as if you were com¬ ing down the street with a prehistoric man that the barbers and tailors had put a fin de siecle surface on.” “Whenever I looked around, and found that prehistoric man at my elbow, it gave me the creeps a litde, as if he were really carrying me off to his cave.” (p. 207) Later she spoke in the same vein to her brother: “ ‘ ''Touche” Mr. Durgin says. He fences, it seems, and he speaks French. It was like an animal speaking French; you always expect them to speak English’” (p. 210). Ignored at Boston teas, Jeff “went away with rage against society”; and when he refused to take any blame for Alan Lynde’s drunkenness, Westover began to see through to the true Jeff: “You are a brute,” answered Westover, with a puzzled air. What puz¬ zled him most and pleased him least was the fellow’s patience under his severity, which he seemed either not to feel or not to mind. It was of a piece with the behavior of the rascally boy whom he had cuffed for frightening Cynthia and her litde brother long ago, and he wondered what final malevolence it portended, (p. 249) Westover realized that Jeff’s was an "earth-bound temperament,” and although Jeff had in some measure profited by his opportuni¬ ties, he “was no longer a naughty boy to be tutored and punished. The revolt latent in him would be violent in proportion to the pressure put upon him, and Westover began to be without the wish to press his fault home to him so strongly” (p. 252). 100 Mary C. Sullivan Bessie Lynde again refers to his animality: “ ‘Now, Mr. Durgin —what a name! I can see it makes you creep—is no more like one of us than a—bear is—and his attitude toward us is that of a bear who’s gone so much with human beings that he thinks he’s a human being’” (p. 285). When Jeff betrays his selfish reasons for preferring Cynthia to Bessie, Westover again recognizes Jeff for what he is: “ ‘I’m not surprised that you’ve kept your own ad¬ vantage steadily in mind. I don’t suppose you know what a savage you are, and I don’t suppose I could teach you. I sha’n’t try, at any rate. I’ll take you on your own ground’” (p. 308). Furthermore, throughout the novel one is conscious of fierce, conscienceless power in the character of Jeff. When the brutal Alan Lynde beats Jeff with a horse-whip, one feels the same pity he would feel did he hear a wild but injured animal whine. Be¬ cause Howells expresses the analogy in an artistic, unobtrusive way, he succeeds in subtly urging us to associate Jeff Durgin with the granite lion—crouching, sleeping, but nonetheless capable of vast destruction. What makes the animal tendencies the more terrify¬ ing is that they are unchecked by any awareness of human responsi¬ bility. Jeff Durgin’s fundamental character is of a piece with the primitive setting. He is, in some ways, a living embodiment of the strange natural phenomenon that overshadowed his growing years; “the boy had been the prophecy of the man in even a dis¬ appointing degree” (p, 45). v Closely interwoven with the description of the “personality” of Lion’s Head and the characterization of Jeff Durgin is the evolu¬ tion of the Durgin homestead from a rustic New England farm¬ house to a prosperous summer hotel which takes its name from the mountaintop across the valley and finds its final landlord in the young man who seems to be so faithfully symbolized by that mountaintop. Just as the native primitivism of Jeff’s physique appears violated by the tailoring and the customs of civilized Boston society, so the pristine naturalness of the mountainside is defiled by the improvements made on the Lion’s Head Hotel. Five years after his first visit Westover “saw what changes had been made in the house. There were large additions, tasteless and characterless, but giving the rooms that were needed. There Setting in Landlord at Lion’s Head lOI was a vulgar modernity in the new parts, expressed with a final intensity in the four-light windows, which are esteemed the last word of domestic architecture in the country” (p. 49). So “the hotel had grown like a living thing,” and the next enlargement was wholly Jackson’s doing, “on the regular American lines”: “When they were got so far from the hotel as to command a pros¬ pect of its ungainly mass sprawled upon the plateau, [Jeff’s] smoul¬ dering disgust burst out: ‘Look at it! Did you ever see anything like it? I wish the damned thing would burn up—or down!’ ” At this point Westover realized that Jeff “wanted to be the Landlord of the Lion’s Head” (p. 131)—that he intended to use the house for his own gain. In fact, this disposition was “the frankest thing in Jeff Durgin” (p. 134). But the artist’s most disturbing realization of this inharmonious evolution came when he fulfilled “his wish to paint Lion’s Head in the winter.” From his bedroom window Westover “looked out on a world whose elements of wood and snow and stone he tried to co-ordinate. There was nothing else in that world but these things, so repellent of one another.” The whole tone of the long descriptive passages that follow is one of disappointment at the loss of integrity which the modern improvements in the hotel have effected. West- over rightly senses that only savage elements are at home in this crude setting. He suffered from the incongruity of the wooden bulk of the hotel, with the white drifts deep about it, and with the granite cliffs of Lion’s Head before it. . . . A teasing sense of the impossibility of the scene, as far as his art was concerned, filled him full of a fond despair of rendering its feeling .... he could not impart that sentiment of delicacy, almost of elegance, which he found in the wilderness, while every detail of civilization physically distressed him. ... in a sort unknown to him in summer he perceived the offence of the hotel itself amid the pure and lonely beauty of the winter landscape. It was a note of intolerable banality, of philistine pretence and vulgar convention, such as Whit- well’s low, unpainted cottage at the foot of the hill did not give. . . . There should have been really no human habitation visible except a wigwam in the shelter of the pines ... if there must be any human presence it should be some savage clad in skins, (pp. 253-255) It is significant that Westover at this time “realized as he had some¬ how not done in his summer sojourns, the entirety of the old 102 Mary C. Sullivan house in the hotel which had encompassed it” (p. 256). Thus Howells is suggesting metaphorically that material additions to a being do not change its inner nature; in fact, unless they develop organically from within they only violate the integrity of the original. The parallel to this in Jeff’s case is compelling. The landlord himself would have been better off had he remained a “low, unpainted cottage.” Westover, the sensitive observer, alone apprehends the full im¬ pact of the setting on the other characters and its silent judgment on their actions and reactions. It is he who registers the changes in the setting and transmits to the reader the sense of loss and foreboding. “ ‘I never wanted it to go beyond the original farm¬ house. . . . I’ve been jealous of every boarder but the first. I should have liked to keep it for myself, and let the world know Lion’s Head from my pictures’ ” (p. 275). The complete “wedding” of the Lion’s Head Hotel with its possibilities for future success and the ambitious Jeff Durgin with his potentialities for unscrupulous, selfish profit came when Jackson and Mrs. Durgin died. Then Jefi “had no complaints to make. Things had fallen out very much to his mind. He was the Land¬ lord at Lion’s Head, at last, with the full right to do what he pleased with the place, and with half a year’s leisure before him to think it over” (p. 364). The true rustic farmhouse buried be¬ neath the additions and alterations demanded by summer-hotel society was now wholly in the hands of the real Jeff Durgin latent beneath the suave, educated, European-traveled hotel-keeper. In a sense, it was inevitable that Howells let the symbol and the reahty join forces tmder the stony gaze of the Lion’s Head that had some¬ thing moral in common with both the structure and the landlord. It is particularly interesting to the literary historian to reahze that upon its first publication The Landlord at Lion’s Head was inter¬ preted in this manner. Although most critics since then have failed to give due emphasis to the strong connection between setting and characterization in the novel, the reviewer for the Outloo\ praised Howells’s ability “to typify in the hotel’s evolution from a farm¬ house to a fashionable mountain resort the evolution of character of those who controlled its destiny.”^ The pervasive meaningfulness of the setting of The Landlord * "Books and Authors,” Outlook, LVI, 78 (May i, 1897). Setting in Landlord at Lion’s Head 103 should not be underestimated. The granite Lion’s Head and the slowly evolving summer hotel are integrally associated with the mood, action, and characterization in the novel. Its strong moral meaning depends in no small measure on the subtle articulateness of the mountains, stones, and houses. They artistically speak out Howells’s ethic; the ferocity of the merely animal unguided by reason or conscience; the cloudy indefiniteness which may conceal reality and confuse moral appraisal of it; the violation that is done to the integrity of nature by any art which is merely surface and selfish; the necessity for sensitive human re¬ sponsibility which raises a man above his animality; and finally the principle that nature determines offspring. One of the most telling lines of the novel is Jeff’s judgment of his dog. Fox, a mongrel which had, in Mrs. Durgin’s estimate, “ ‘the least sense for a dog I ever saw.’ ” Jeff quite shrewdly says of him: “‘He wasn’t a bad dog. He was stupid’” (p. 49). Much of the same might be said of Jeff Durgin himself: he wasn’t necessarily a bad person; he was morally and humanly stupid. The Architecture of The Rise of Silas Lapham G. Thomas Tanselle \iJT hen the architect SEYMOUR, in Chapter 3 of The Rise of Silas Lapham, is discussing with the Laphams their plans for a new house, he suggests a dining room behind the hall because such an arrangement “gets you rid of one of those long, straight, ugly staircases... and gives you an effect of amplitude and space.” He also hopes that Silas will not insist on a flamboyant material like black walnut, for which there has recently been “a great craze.” After all, as a paint manufacturer ought to know, a more everyday material will be just as effective in the end; indeed, “there is really nothing like white paint” for simple dignity. So Howells knew, and he constructed, on a small foundation and with common ma¬ terials, scrupulously following his blueprint, a house of “amplitude and space” which contains, not a “long, straight, ugly” staircase, but rather two staircases that intersect in many ingenious ways before they finally come together at the upper level. It is, in fact, this double “staircase,” or plot, that has caused more disagreement than anything else about the relative merits of Lap- ham. Any reader sees immediately that the book is made up of two strands which can be referred to roughly as the “bankruptcy” plot and the “love” plot and that certain characters are involved in both. But the love story is sometimes thought of as not integrally related to the main story of Silas’s financial downfall and ethical rise; it has been considered Howells’s concession to the public de¬ mand for romance. Oscar Firkins once went so far as to say that the two plots “do not concern each other” (though he admitted, “Structurally perhaps {Lapham^ is the shapeliest of the novels”) Howard Mumford Jones has suggested that “possibly [Howells’s] ^ William Dean Howells: A Study (Cambridge, Mass., 1924), pp. 71, 112. In fairness to Firkins, one should also quote his statement that “the story of the business difficulties of the father is united to this love-tale by ties which a logician might blame as inadequate, but which, in an age in which art measures its prosperity by its indifference to logic, criticism must not hasten to condemn” (p. 112). The Architecture of Rise of Silas Lapham 105 two plots interfere with each other” and Harry Hartwick believes that the book “is weakened by Howells’s inevitable intrusion of a love affair.”^ The fact that a manuscript summary of the original idea for Lapham contains only two sentences referring to the “sub¬ plot” has been used by both the detractors of the novel and its defenders.^ The former consider this document proof that the Penelope-Tom plot, as it finally turned out, is an excrescence which Howells allowed to develop during the composition of the novel but which was not in his mind originally as an important part of the book; the latter, on the contrary, assert that the very develop¬ ment of the second plot beyond the proportions suggested by the synopsis reveals how essential and integral it is—Howells saw that he could not get along without it. Whichever way one argues, it is clear that any final evaluation of Lapham as a work of art must meet this question of its basic unity and that any meaningful answer must come from an examination of the work itself as we have it. The presence of the word “rise” in the title naturally draws attention to the rise-and-fall pattern, and critics have most frequent- * Introduction to the World’s Classics edition of Lapham (London, 1948), pp. x-xi. Jones explains that “once Howells has got Tom down to Nahant, the conditions of the plot compel him to lose interest in the hero [Tom] as a person; he becomes merely the occasion of tension in the Lapham family and quite fades out at the end. The management of the plot is, I think, the real weakness here.” But even as “the occasion of tension” he is serving his function and helping make the two plots work together. A more serious objection to the Corey plot consists of the “good many loose ends” Jones notices in the handling of the Coreys: that Bromfield is too “passive to be effective except as a commentator”; that, although the Corey fortunes shrink, nothing “follows from what would appear to be a plot datum of significance”; and that the two Corey daughters remain shadowy (pp. vii-viii). One may concede, however, that these are undeveloped possibilities for parallelism without detracting from the impressiveness of the plot integra¬ tion that is actually achieved. ^The Foreground of American Fiction (New York, 1934), pp. 324-325; at the same time, he alludes to Howells’s “able construction of plot,” which he considers a “delight.” That the romantic element is an “intrusion” is also suggested by Marcus Cunliffe, who talks of what led Howells “to contrive a subplot that seems a little implausible” {The Literature of the United States, London, 1954, p. 198). * Clara and Rudolf Kirk were the first to describe and comment on this manuscript synopsis of “The Rise of Silas Needham” in their introduction to the American Writers Series, Howells: Representative Selections (New York, 1950), pp. cix-cx. Everett Carter, in the introduction to the Harper’s Modern Classics edition (New York, 1958), reprints this synopsis (pp. xiv-xv). Recently Kermit 'Vanderbilt, in “Howells Among the Brahmins: Why ‘The Bottom Dropped Out’ During The Rise of Silas Lapham," New England Quarterly, XXXV, 291-317 (Sept., 1962), has analyzed some of the changes made in the novel from the Needham synopsis to the Century serialization to the published book; see especially Part IV (pp. 308-313), where he discusses the enlargement of the “subplot” to such an extent that the book becomes a “general inquiry into the social structure of a new era in America.” io6 G. Thomas Tanselle ly looked at the structure of the novel in these terms—a social and materialistic rise accompanied by a moral descent in the first part of the book, which reverses itself to become a worldly failure and an ethical success in the last part.^ But this approach is not entirely successful in showing the relevance of the secondary plot: in fact, although most commentators do feel the need to say something about the construction of the book and usually praise it in general terms, one is surprised to observe how rarely they actually analyze the precise degree of integration of the two plots.® There should be some value, therefore, in examining the structure of Lapham in detail, for only then shall we have a factual basis for evaluating the two contradictory traditions: that of commending the book’s finely wrought structure and of criticizing its superfluous plot. Only then shall we know whether the edifice can support the burden it has to bear or whether it will collapse as a result of inexpert draftsman¬ ship. I We may begin, in order to see each part of the book in its proper perspective, by making a quick survey of the over-all plan of the novel before going in more detail into the various parts. Lapham falls, quite naturally, into five large movements. One notices, first of all, that the dinner party comes in Chapter 14 and that, since the book contains twenty-seven chapters, this is the exact center, with thirteen chapters on each side. That everything radiates from this central chapter is not a new idea—almost all commentators have ' Besides Howells’s famous comment to Francis Parkman (who had misunderstood the title) that he supposed Lapham’s rise to be a moral one, see his remark in a letter to Professor William Strunk that Lapham “was finding out, against his selfish ambition and temptations, what a true rise was”—a letter published by Paul Carter in “A Howells Letter,” New England Quarterly, XXVIII, 93-96 (March, 1955). ® The major discussions of Lapham will be referred to in later parts of this article, but many briefer comments on the book allude to its structure: Carl Van Doren in Cambridge History of American Literature (New York, 1917-1921), III, 80; Alexander Harvey, William Dean Howells (New York, 1917), pp. 54, 147; D. G. Cooke, William Dean Howells (New York, 1922), p. 248; Ludwig Lewisohn, Expression in America (New York, 1932), p. 253; Booth Tarkington in the Centenary edition of Lapham (Boston, 1937), p. xi; Carl Van Doren, The American Novel (rev. ed.; New York, 1940), p. 127; Gordon S. Haight in Literary History of the United States (New York, 1948), p. 892; Alexander Cowie, The Rise of the American Novel (New York, 1948), p. 670; Van Wyck Brooks, Howells: His Life and World (New York, 1959), p. 162; Edwin T. Bowden, The Dungeon of the Heart (New York, 1961), pp. 108-109; Rudolf and Clara Kirk in the Collier edition of Lapham (New York, 1962), p. 9, and in William Dean Howells (New York, 1962), p. 106. The Architecture of Rise of Silas Lap ham 107 observed it. But there is no general agreement from there on as to how the book is divided. George Arms says that the “second part,” Chapters ii to 19, “consists of one highly concentrated sequence, the dinner party and the events anticipating and following it.” But it is not clear why one should consider the discussion about what Penelope is to do (in Chaps. 16-19) or Corey’s visit to Lapham’s office (Chap, ii) as more closely associated with the dinner party than other events earlier or later. It seems best, therefore, to limit the dinner party sequence to three chapters—Chapter 14, the one preceding it, and the one following. In Chapter 13 the invitations are sent, the Laphams receive them, and they prepare to go; in Chapter 15 Lapham the next day apologizes to Tom for the way he behaved at the party. These three chapters bear a direct relation to the party, then, and together may be taken as the central pivot. We are now left with twelve chapters before, and twelve after, this central section. Each of these groups of twelve falls symmetri¬ cally into two parts, one of four chapters and the other of eight. In the first half. Chapters 1-4 concern the Lapham family and por¬ tray Silas’s materialistic “rise”—the interview, plans for the house, and a visit to the house. Beginning with Chapter 5, there are eight chapters devoted mainly to the Corey family, introduced by the conversation between Tom and his father about what work Tom is going to do (Chap. 5). The question of Tom’s job, in fact, is the unifying force of this section and brings the Coreys into contact with the Laphams, as their relationship is explored in terms of Tom’s romantic interest in one of the Lapham daughters. It is worth observing that, up to this halfway point in the book, one has no basis for referring to the love story as the “subplot” since more than half of the chapters, quantitatively, have been given over to it. The second half of the novel breaks into the same kind of group¬ ing, though with the opposite emphasis—a four-chapter section (Chaps. 16-19) dealing with the love plot and an eight-chapter por¬ tion (Chaps. 20-27) dealing with the bankruptcy plot. This half of the book shows, in both plots, an ethical choice being faced and made. In Chapter 16 Tom declares his love, and in the succeeding three chapters Penelope tries to decide what to do. After she refuses Tom in Chapter 19 (in the vein of romantic self-sacrifice discussed at the dinner party), attention turns to the business plot with Silas’s io8 G. Thomas Tanselle revelation of Rogers’s treachery (Chap. 20). The Laphams now discuss the Rogers matter, just as they had wrestled with Penelope’s choice earlier, until events reach a crisis, and Lapham, deciding to sacrifice personal financial gain, finds himself in bankruptcy (Chap, 27). The visit of the Reverend Mr. Sewell in the last chapter is not only to be contrasted to the Hubbard interview of the first chapter but is also to be compared with the earlier visit in Chapter 18. That Sewell should be consulted in both the Penelope-Tom affair and in the Lapham-Rogers matter is indicative of the parallelism with which the climactic events of each plot are handled. Such a way of schematizing the novel brings out the care Howells has taken to keep the two plots in balance. Twelve chap¬ ters are dominated by each plot, and they are arranged around the dinner-party chapters with regard for both symmetry and emphasis. It does make sense to speak of the romance as a subplot to the extent that it is placed in the middle of the book, leaving the emphatic positions at beginning and end for the other plot. After we witness Silas as a boasting self-made businessman at the opening, we shift our attention to Tom Corey, so that we are fully prepared for the climax of the theme of “social rise” at the dinner party; then we watch Penelope making her decision (and thus get most of the love plot out of the way in the middle of the book) before turning to Silas’s parallel problem in the last block of chapters."^ The two plots support each other, but the decision in the love plot does seem to be serving as a preparation for Silas’s final decision. It may perhaps be convenient to summarize this approach diagrammatically:® ’similarly, Donald Pizer, in “The Ethical Unity of The Rise of Silas Lapham" American Literature, XXXII, 322-327 (Nov., i960), says that the love plot contributes to Lapham’s education because, “Dominating the center of the novel, it is solved before the full exposition of Lapham’s business career” (p. 324). Vanderbilt, too, recognizes that “subplot” is not quite the right term (pp. 310-312). ® It should be noted that the divisions of the novel for serial publication in the Century do not coincide, except in one instance (Chapter 12 is the end of the fifth instalment), with the outline suggested in this paper. Though it seems undeniable that serial publication affects structure (when a work is specifically written with such publication in mind), the serial divisions of Lapham do not appear to correspond to plot movement so much as to achieve an apportioning into ten fairly equal segments. The ten monthly instalments (from November, 1884, through August, 1885) divide the chapters in the following manner (with the number of pages covered given in parentheses, those in the Century before the oblique line, those in the first edition afterward): (i) Chapters 1-2 (14/52); (2) Chapters 3-5 (13/47); ( 3 ) Chapters 6-8 (15/52); (4) Chapters 9-10 (12/41); (5) Chapters 11-12 (14/50); (6) Chapters 13-14 (15/52); (7) Chapters 15-18 (13/47); (8) Chapters 19-21 (15/54); (9) Chapters 22-25 (21/74); (10) Chapters 26-27 (13/46). The only division which is out of proportion is the ninth. The Architecture of Rise of Silas Lapham 109 Chapters I. 1-4 (4) Business Materialistic rise Discussions about house II. 5-12 (8) Love Social rise Discussions about marriage III. 13-15 (3) Dinner Equilibrium of elements Ethical choice: IV. 16-19 (4) Love Social fall Penelope Ethical choice: V. 20-27 (8) Business Materialistic fall Silas The centrality of social relationships and conventions to both plots is evidenced not only by the central position of the dinner party (with its emphasis on etiquette and the relationship between social classes) but also by the general progression of the seasons, against which all the events of the novel are set. As we move into the summer of 1875 in the early part of the book and then through fall into winter and back around to summer at the end, we watch the fashionable classes leaving Boston for their summer homes and gradually returning again. This is the large rhythmic pattern that informs every individual incident and plays a crucial role in de¬ termining the date for the dinner party. The outline of Lapham set forth here has the merit of dealing with both plots and of giving each an equal place in the structure: in short, of finding that a symmetrical arrangement of chapters coincides with the pattern of movement between the plots. This is not to deny the value of such a plan as George Arms’s three-part division (after Chaps. 10 and 19); what he describes as the “essential movement” of the book—a rising toward material success, followed by two failures, first in “social ambitions” and then in business—is certainly there and is a helpful way of seeing the over-all pattern, but if Chapter 25 had been held over, the tenth instalment would have been equally out of proportion. The slight pattern created by the fact that the first and last instalments, as well as the three middle ones (4, 5, 6), each consist of two chapters, is coincidental and of little significance when one considers some of the breaking points these divisions produce: for example, Penelope’s refusal of Tom (Chap. 19), surely a climax to be compared with Silas’s later decision, is the first chapter of an instalment, followed by two others which shift the subject to Rogers and to Silas’s financial problems. The division is more under¬ standable, then, as the strategy of a magazine editor (who not only would hope for equal instalments but would try to end an instalment before a climactic incident in order to build up interest in the forthcoming issue) than as a guide to the structure of the novel. no G. Thomas Tanselle but it is most applicable to the bankruptcy plot.® One must agree with Arms that there is “a sense of form m. The Rise of Silas Lap- ham that is notably fine and in last analysis renders the novel a work of art”; but one must realize that any attempt to examine what creates that sense of form has to show, in addition to the move¬ ment of the whole, the inextricability and interrelationship of the parts—in this case, the two plots. One can then discern—to use Mark Twain’s phrase about Howells’s style—the “architectural fehcities of construction” in Lapham. II “I never saw anything so very sacred about a big rock, along a river or in a pasture, that it wouldn’t do to put mineral paint on it in three colours.... I say the landscape was made for man, and not man for the landscape.”^® This statement strikes the keynote, not only of the opening chapter, but of the opening section of four chapters. The insensitive pride of the self-made man and the dominance of the business ethic (“The day of small things was past, and I don’t suppose it will ever come again in this country,” p. 20)— illustrated m the figure of Silas—are the motifs of these chapters and are clearly expressed in the interview. But the first chapter introduces certain other matters that are to be important in the structure of the novel as a whole. For one thing, we know that it is summer (p. 15) in 1875 (P- S)- Then we have references to Silas’s new house (pp. 23, 27) and an implied contrast with Bartley’s rented apartment (p. 16) and his future house (“There are places in that Clover Street house that need touching up so dreadfully,” p. 29). We have the allusion to something unpleasant in Silas’s short “Arms, in his introduction to the Rinehart edition (New York, 1951), pp. xiv-xv, defines his division further (p. xv) by saying that the first part contains “four main sequences” (not specified), the second “one highly concentrated sequence” (the dinner), and the third “a series of hopes and disappointments”; the final moral rise he finds oc¬ curring in “two steps”; resistance to temptations, then the “testing of [Lapham’s] sensi¬ bility by Sewell.” He also talks of the “pleasing symmetry” of the Hubbard interview at the beginning and the Sewell visit at the end, but he believes finally that Howells “does not achieve a richly satisfying relationship between the daughter’s conduct in love and the father’s in business.” John E. Hart, in “The Commonplace as Heroic in The Rise of Silas Lapham,” Modern Fiction Studies, VIII, 375-383 (1962-1963), also points out that an interview opens and closes the book (in addition to commenting on the symbols of houses and paint). ^'‘Lapham (Boston, 1885), p. 18. Page references to the novel, hereinafter cited parenthetically in the text, are to the first edition. The Architecture of Rise of Silas Lapham III trial of a partnership system (pp. 20-21), foreshadowing the Rogers affair; we have Bartley’s observations on the beauty of Silas’s secre¬ tary (pp. 23, 28), foreshadowing the Zerrilla episode. That almost everything in the book can be traced back to this interview is a commonplace of Howells criticismthat the foreshadowing is extremely subtle at times (while admittedly mechanical at others) is much less frequently pointed out. Particularly here the theme of social contrasts is introduced, not merely in Bartley’s sarcastic re¬ plies, but in a number of small touches: Silas keeps his old Vermont house “in good shape” so that he can “spend a month or so there every summer” (p. 7)—just as the best Boston families leave town at that time; he has in his office a “ground-glass door” which he can shut “between his little den and the book-keepers, in their larger den outside” (p. 2)—for he has risen to a class above; he ostenta¬ tiously says, “/ didn’t know what the Back Bay was then” (p. 13), when he remembers the scientist alluding to it years before—since he has now obviously “arrived”; he is even referred to in Bartley’s article as “one of nature’s noblemen” (p. 26). All these details (along with a glimpse of married life on one social level—the Hub¬ bards, pp. 27-30) work to suggest the social values and aspirations that are an inseparable part of the commercial “rise.” The other three chapters in the first movement develop the story of Lapham’s growing domination by materialistic standards in terms of one of its social manifestations established in the first chapi¬ ter—the new house. Chapter 2 is a flashback to the preceding summer (1874), when the idea of moving to a new house had first come into the Laphams’ thoughts, and it traces through the winter the growth of their plans for building; Chapter 3 moves into the spring, when the architect is consulted, and the early summer, when the pile-driving begins; and Chapter 4 describes a family inspection tour of what had been finished by July. The house as a symbol of materialism is evident in many remarks of Lapham’s which show ''Arms sums the matter up in speaking of “cross reference” (p. xiv): “Every critic has had something to say about the introduction of anticipatory detail in the first episode, and perhaps in those beginning chapters cross reference is a little too much done.” When William Manierre, in "The Rise of Silas Lapham: Retrospective Discussion as Dramatic Technique,” College English, XXIII, 357-361 (Feb., 1962), uses the terms “retrospective discussion” and “anticipatory detail,” he has the same sort of technique in mind: he points out, for example, that the meeting of Tom and Silas in Chapter 4 is discussed from various points of view in five later scenes, or that the “shavings” episode forms the basis of conversation between different persons at four later points (pp. 358-359). 112 G. Thomas Tanselle that he is taking money as the basis of everything—speaking of his daughters and the improvement in their social position that the nevv^ house \vould bring, he asks his 'wife, “Why don’t you get them into society? There’s money enough!” (p. 39); of the architecture, he comments, “And if you come to style, I don’t know as anybody has got more of a right to put it on than what we have” (p. 44). The entrance of Rogers in Chapter 3, when Silas and his wife visit the new house, furthers the association of the house with the “business rise”—a rise, it is now clear, accomplished at the cost of some human feeling. Mrs. I^pham sees the structural significance of Rogers’s appearance at this time when she says that he “always manages to appear just at the moment when he seems to have gone fairly out of our lives, and blight everything” (p. 62)—his intrusions will punctuate the book with reminders of the price of business success.^^ But the house, a natural symbol of social status, does more than introduce us to the business plot, for the beginnings of the Corey element occur here, too. We first meet the Coreys as early as Chapter 2 (when the Laphams run into them at Baie St. Paul, p. 32), and it is the Coreys who first make the Laphams dissatisfied with the house in Nankeen Square that had served them for twelve years: Mrs. Corey says, “Nearly all our friends are on the New Land or on the Hill” (p. 38). It is fair to say, therefore, that the opening movement is centered on the Lapham-business plot (as opposed to the Corey-love plot), but that the construction of the house is an ingenious way to bring in the matter of social awareness, important to both plots, and to make comments about the Laphams’ taste relevant—“rich and rather ugly clothes,” “abominable frescoes” (p. 33), “a crude taste in architecture,” admiring “the worst” (p. 46), lack of “a sufficiently cultivated palate for Souchong” (p. 50), and so on. The romantic interest is also introduced (with a number of clues that Penelope is the more interesting of the girls, even to Tom—pp. 34, 72, 78);^® ^“George N. Bennett, in William Dean Howells: The Development of a Novelist (Norman, Okla., 1959), points out that Rogers appears at “decisive moments” (p. 159). And Richard Coanda discusses Rogers as a devil-figure, playing his role in the Christian drama of Lapham’s fortunate fall {Explicator, XXII, 1963, item 16). Jones, in his World’s Classics introduction, points out that most readers do not see these hints about Penelope and suggests, “Keeping this secret down, so to speak, means that Howells is unable to show any clear reason why Penelope rather than Irene should attract Corey” (p. x). But one could argue, rather, that the multiplicity of references The Architecture of Rise of Silas Lapham “3 and Tom’s visit in Chapter 4 prepares us for the next movement, beginning in Chapter 5, when Tom becomes the center of attention. But the focus is not blurred, and we are not allowed to forget that behind the Laphams’ rise lies the manufacture of paint, which can¬ not be used “on the human conscience” (p. 14), that we are witness¬ ing “the effect of the poison of ambition” (p. 45), that only the man who can “rise” to “choose the ideal, the unselfish part” is happy (p. 67)—in short, we are prepared to read, as in Bartley’s interview (p. 2), of Silas’s “life, death, and Christian sufferings.” Ill Just after Silas speaks to Penelope at the end of Chapter 4, the scene shifts to another parental relationship. Chapter 5, a discussion between Tom and his father in the Corey library about the possi¬ bility of Tom’s getting a job, is the first time we have been taken into the Corey home and opens up a group of eight chapters (twice as long as the first part, both in number of chapters and of pages) concerned primarily with Tom—and thus with the love plot. As the romance was subordinate in the first part, so the business plot is secondary here; yet the two are integrated through the elder Corey’s concern about his finances and Tom’s entrance into Lap- ham’s firm. There are occasional episodes in this part where Tom is not present, but in those cases he is the topic of conversation. Even when the scene is the Laphams’ bedroom, as in the brief passage at the end of Chapter 5 which continues from the point where Chapter 4 ended, Silas is talking about Tom and how the paint business would make a man of him. The only intrusion—the Laphams’ discussion of Rogers’s request for a loan—is inserted, in Chapter 10, between a description of Tom and his father and an account of one of Tom’s visits to the Laphams’ Nantasket cottage; the Rogers affair is, in this way, placed within the framework of the Corey plot'^ and takes the direction it does so that the only pos- to Penelope’s attractiveness makes the affair "secret” only to the Coreys and the Laphams and not to the reader. The degree of integration of the two plots is illustrated by a conversation in this chapter, reminiscent of a number of similar conversations throughout the book. When Mrs. Lapham asks Silas, “How came he to come down with you?,” Silas returns, “Who? Rogers?”; when she then explains that she meant “Mr. Corey,” Silas appears surprised, “affecting not to have thought she could mean Corey” (p. 188). Harry Hayden Clark, in his Modern Library introduction (New York, 1951), p. xii, calls attention to a similar unifying device. G. Thomas Tanselle 114 sible tarnish on Lapham’s success has, from the Lapham point of view, been removed before the turning point of the book. Lap- ham’s pride and complacency^ rising as a result of Tom’s attentions to his daughter, now suffer no check from the business plot; rather, with the feeling that reparation has been made, comes a release and an attitude of even greater confidence—symbolized by Silas’s decision “to take advantage” of his wife’s high spirits (resulting from his loan to Rogers) by “bringing Corey down to supper” (p.186). It is this concentration on Tom’s affairs which is the most strik¬ ing aspect of the second movement. The pattern is set in Chapter 5, where the remarks of Tom and his father have to do both with Tom’s prospects of a job and with the social distinction between people like the Coreys (“Essex County people... just a little beyond the salt of the earth,” p. 91) and the nouveaux riches (“the suddenly rich are on a level with any of us nowadays,” p. 87). The social and the business elements continue to be mixed, though here the business side enters through the Corey heritage (Bromfield’s father, “the old India merchant,” p. 95) and through Tom’s aspirations in the Lapham firm (equivalent to Silas’s ambitions in the social realm). Chapter 6 begins with Tom’s visit to his family’s summer place, moves into his application to Lapham for a position, and ends with his arrival at the Laphams’ summer cottage; Chapter 7 is devoted to this first visit at the Laphams’, with business again occupying the middle of the chapter, but it is worth noting that we are not taken into the room where Silas and Tom are talking—the emphasis is on the social and romantic implications of that business interview. In the following chapter, after the Coreys’ discussion of their son’s relations with the Laphams, Tom begins working at Silas’s ofi&ce. In Chapter 9 there is a similar conversation between Silas and his wife, followed by the visit to the new house with the famous episode of the shavings (pp. 161-162),^® after which there is more talk about the Laphams between Tom and his father, and '"Everett Carter, in Howells and the Age of Realism (Philadelphia, 1954), discusses (pp. 151, 165) the sexual implications of the scene and the significance of the shaving, “a sliver of the major symbol,” as a “symbol for the sliver of personal morality which is part of the large morality of social living.” One wonders, however, why it is the female who manipulates the umbrella and why a sliver from the “major symbol” of materialism and selfishness should represent a fragmentation of the “large,” presumably altruistic and unselfish, morality necessary for society as a whole. The Architecture of Rise of Silas iMpham “5 finally we have the Laphams again speculating on Tom’s intentions. The next two chapters end with further visits of Tom’s to the Nantasket cottage, the second of these describing Bromfield Corey’s call at Lapham’s office (a business setting with social overtones) parallel to Tom’s first visit to the cottage in Chapter 7 (a social setting with business overtones). The whole movement of eight chapters is divided into two subsidiary parts by the two appearances of Mrs. Corey, in Chapter 8 and in Chapter 12. The Coreys, in Chapter 8, are discussing Tom during Mrs. Corey’s brief return to town in July; in Chapter 12, they again talk about Tom and sum up the situation after Mrs. Corey and the daughters have come back in the early fall—and it is then that the Coreys decide they must go through with a dinner. The building of the house is brought into each of the last four chapters (pp. 154-162, 179-180, 194, 204-205, 232-233), and the tech¬ nique of “cross reference” in general is used with as much effective¬ ness here as in the more celebrated instance of the Hubbard inter¬ view. The Zerrilla matter is foreshadowed in references to the “pretty girl” that Tom notices in Silas’s office (pp. 100, 148, 197), in Tom’s overhearing Silas’s advice to her about divorce (p. 145), and in the “sordidness” of the vignette of the drunken sailor at the end of Chapter 8 (pp. 149-150); the Rogers affair is of course talked about in Chapter 10 (and referred to in Chap, ii, pp. 198, 202); Hubbard’s interview is used to make social distinctions between those who read the Events and those who read the Daily (pp. 103, 200-201); literary discussions are placed to prepare us for the one at the dinner and to continue the attack on sentimental self-sacrifice (pp. 122-123, 138, 155-156, 157-160, 165, 190). Further, there are suggestions that Penelope is more attractive than Irene (pp. 122, 138, 156-157, 187-191, 208, 213-215, 224-225), with so direct a remark as Mrs. Lapham’s “I hope you’ll be just as well satisfied. Si, if it turns out he doesn’t want Irene after all” (pp. 188-189) i comments about a “temptation” of Silas (p. 186); and passages reinforcing the whole parallelism of the Coreys’ dwindling capital, the Laphams’ increas¬ ing fortune, and the sentiments of both that dishonest money is to be abhorred (pp. 131, 184-185). The comparison of Lapham and Corey is not simply a matter of their mutual, if different, interests in business and society, nor of similar situations, like the parents’ ii6 G. Thomas Tanselle discussions of their sons and daughters; it extends even to particular remarks: we have Bromfield Corey, late in Chapter 9, saying that “this thing we call civilisation” is “really an affair of individuals” (p. 164), a statement which recalls Lapham’s earlier in the chapter, when he says that “a thing has got to be born in a man; and if it ain’t born in him, all the privations in the world won’t put it there” (p. 152). Finally, one should not overlook remarks which point forward to the dinner, since this entire movement leads up to the decision to have it. As early as Chapter 9 (p. 166), Bromfield says to his son, “One can’t do anything in the summer.... Still, I can’t rid myself of the idea of a dinner.” IV The center of the novel, in every respect, occurs in the three chapters dealing with the dinner, and it is not surprising that the dinner party has been the most frequently discussed scene in the book and the one that remains in the memory as somehow sym¬ bolizing the whole work.^® Chapter 13 begins with a metaphor that expresses the Coreys’ feelings about the dinner in business terms: “Not only the’principal of their debt of gratitude remained, but the accruing interest” (p. 242). The tying together of elements, suggested by this sort of metaphor, reaches its highest point in these chapters. The first takes up the Coreys’ selection of guests and the Laphams’ preparations for attending. Chapter 14 is the dinner it¬ self, memorable largely because of Howells’s skill in selecting ex¬ actly the right details (Lapham’s trouble with his gloves, his leg falling asleep, his cigar ashes on the plate, and the like)—but hardly less so because of Howells’s courage in tackling the difficult task of presenting such a climactic scene directly and of giving us the actual conversation. For the structure of the book, this scene is a neces¬ sity; Howells’s great accomplishment can be measured by the fact that the scene does not strike most readers as a disappointment but rather as an admirable fulfilment of its role as keystone. And Chapter 15 (the shortest and perhaps the most intense in the book), in which Lapham the following day apologizes to Tom for his Carter (pp. 166-167) and Bennett (p. 160), for example, point out the centrality of the dinner party; Booth Tarkington, in his introduction to the Centenary edition, com¬ ments on the impression which that scene made on him when he first read it (p. xv); and a dinner scene is used as the jacket decoration for the Modern Library edition. The Architecture of Rise of Silas Lapham 117 drunkenness and lack of refinement, does not come as an anticlimax but instead reveals how well the dinner has served as a means of turning the direction of the story. The dinner is a point of equilibrium with the Coreys and the Laphams meeting ostensibly as equals, and the conversation there draws together all the threads of the book. Since Seymour is present, Silas’s new house comes up for discussion (p. 269), and the talk moves on to the Coreys’ place, which is in “perfect taste,” as the description of its classic simplicity at the beginning of the chapter suggests (pp. 263-264);^^ and from there the conversation takes a natural turn into architecture in general, which leads to matters of taste in the other arts as well. Before the subject of architecture is passed, however, it is skilfully connected with social distinctions based on wealth and on summers in the country: Brom- field suggests, half seriously, that the “deserving poor of neat habits” might be able to make use of “all the beautiful, airy, wholesome houses that stand empty the whole summer long, while their owners are away in their lowly cots beside the sea” (p. 273), mansions that appear at that season as “long rows of close-shuttered, handsome, brutally insensible houses”—and he can put forward this idea, like Swift’s modest proposer, because, as he says, “I spend my summers The Coreys’ house in “Bellingham Place” is based, according to Howells’s daughter, on one built by Thomas Buckminster Curtis at 45 Mount Vernon Street, “where my father often dined in his earlier Boston days” (Centenary edition, p. v). In her foreword, Mildred Howells also refers to the autobiographical basis of the novel—extending even to the seasonal pattern. Howells had bought in 1884 “a small house on the water side of Beacon Street”; and, “as there were various alterations to be made in it, he spent most of the summer there overseeing them, while he sent the rest of the family to the country” (p. v). Clara and Rudolf Kirk quote Howells’s letter to his father in the summer of 1884 (from Life in Letters, Garden City, N. Y., 1928, I, 363-364), commenting on the “miles of empty houses all round me” and on the fact that “nobody else I know sleeps in town”—a letter which the dinner-party conversation in Lapham echoes almost verbatim. The Kirks also discuss the connection between Howells’s move to Beacon Street from Louisburg Square and Lapham’s similar move {William Dean Howells, pp. 104-106)— though Lapham’s “Nankeen Square” cannot be identified with Louisburg Square, because it is in the South End just off Washington Street (see the opening of Chap. 2). It seems most reasonable to equate “Nankeen Square” with Chester Square, as Clark does in his introduction (p. vii) and James M. Spinning in his notes (p. 518) to the Riverside Literature Series edition (Boston, 1928), or with Canton Square, as Mildred Howells does (p. v). According to Walter Muir Whitchill, in Boston: A Topographical History (Cambridge, Mass., 1959), Chester Square was established in 1850 (p. 127), and the wider land in the Neck south of Dover Street rapidly grew in population in the 1850’s (p. 122); but by the mid-i86o’s the flight to the Back Bay was already occurring with such precipitance that people like the Laphams could find many good buys in the area (p. 120). The Laphams bought their Nankeen house in 1863, since, in 1875, they had lived there twelve years (p. 31). ii8 G. Thomas Tanselle in town, and I occupy my own house, so that I can speak impartial¬ ly and intelligently.” The main topic is literature, particularly popular novels like Tears, Idle Tears, in which the hero and heroine make “the most wildly satisfactory and unnecessary sacrifices for each other” (p. 277)—“you can’t put a more popular thing than self-sacrifice into a novel.” It is here that Howells inserts, in the words of the Reverend Mr. Sewell, his first explicit comments on self-sacrifice and on the relation of fiction to life; to Sewell the unrealistic self- sacrifice in sentimental novels is “psychical suicide,” and the effect of the novels is “ruinous.” After the ladies leave the room, the conversation turns to reminiscences of the Civil War and the sub¬ ject of heroism—and sacrifice. Sewell again sums up the general feeling when he says that until a new occasion for heroism arises, “we must content ourselves with the everyday generosities and sacri¬ fices” (p. 284). This brings the group back to the lack of realism in literature, and then Silas, who is always a step behind in the conversation, tells of a war experience that illustrates sacrifice. His story about Jim Millon not only furnishes us with the background information for the Zerrilla episode (and we learn at the end of this chapter that Zerrilla is the Miss Dewey of Silas’s office) but shows that Silas himself is indebted to someone else for saving his life (just as Mrs. Corey feels an obligation to Mrs. Lapham for saving hers). Silas’s drunken rambling also includes references to Rogers, to the Lapham paint, to Mrs. Corey’s charity drive, to the library in his new house, and so on—all of which brings to mind important earlier episodes. The short chapter which follows is a necessary coda to the din¬ ner scene. In it we wimess the beginnings of humility and com¬ passion, not merely in Silas, but in Tom as well. Silas’s apology, almost groveling, is perhaps rather extreme, but at least no one can fail to see the difference between this Silas and the boastful man of the first half of the book. The earlier Silas had been saying to his family just the opposite of what he now says to Tom: “you’re a gentleman, and I’m not, and it ain’t right I should be over you” (p. 295). Silas recognizes that money alone does not make him a gentleman, and Tom is struck by “the tragic humility of his appeal” (p. 296). But Tom, too, has some misgivings, and the last The Architecture of Rise of Silas Lapham 119 part of the chapter focuses on Tom’s reactions to Silas’s apology, as a preparation for the ensuing group of chapters which deal (even more intensely than the eight preceding the dinner) with Tom’s courtship of Penelope. While Silas is humbling himself, Tom’s special interest in the Laphams is revealed by his interruptions (“I have my reasons for refusing to hear you,” p. 296) and by his thoughts (“It had become a vital necessity with him to think the best of Lapham,” p, 297). He sees Silas as an “offensive boor”; yet he remembers “that which must control him at last,” speaking to him “almost with the girl’s voice” (p. 298). It is then, in think¬ ing the matter over, that Tom understands how he, too, needs to be humbler, for he had met Lapham’s apology “on the gentlemanly ground,” selfishly sparing his own feelings, “asserting the superiori¬ ty of his sort,” and “superfinely standing aloof.” He also recognizes his family’s legitimate concern: “Often he could not make it appear right that he should merely please himself in what chiefly concerned himself” (p. 299); there was even the possibility of an “injury he might be doing to some one besides his family and himself” (p. 300). All these thoughts border on self-sacrifice; certainly Tom is beginning to be more considerate of others. Just as the two plots involve a similar kind of decision about self-sacrifice, so here, in this one chapter, we observe both Tom and Silas going through a similar change of attitude. The chapter ends with Tom, like Silas, “far as might be from vain confidence” (a surprising position for both of them); and Tom decides to go to Silas to offer “reparation” for the “want of sympathy—of humanity—which he had shown” (p. 300). Tom is now ready to apologize, as Silas was at the beginning of the chapter. To have accomplished so much in three chapters should be re¬ garded as an astonishing technical performance. It would be dif¬ ficult to find reasons for concurring in O. W. Firkins’s complaint about the “leisurely pace” of the book in which “thirty-one pages are allotted to a dinner at which nothing decisive occurs, to say nothing of the assignment of from twenty to twenty-five pages to the elaboration of pre-prandial arrangements” (p. 113). That “nothing decisive occurs” may be partly true in terms of physical actions, but one cannot deny that a great deal happens here in terms of feelings and attitudes. When Tom thinks of the “chaos” of 120 G. Thomas Tanselle experience, which at times seems “ruin” and at other times appears to be “the materials out of which fine actions and a happy life might be shaped” (p. 299), he is also describing, one may imagine, the process of the novel itself, by which the disorganized impressions and incidents of life are structured. Once the “form” and “content” are seen as inseparable, the indispensability of these chapters is also recognized; and, conversely, the success of these chapters is that they prove the artificiality of any such division as “form” and “content.” It is not surprising, then, that architecture is a prominent subject in the dinner chapter. One would expect matters related to the major symbol to enter the central chapter; but, beyond that, if Lapham is a demonstration of the theory of fiction set forth within it (as it manifestly is), the comments on architecture may be applied to the art of fiction as well. In the literary discussion of Chapter 14 the emphasis (as in Criticism and Fiction') is on proportion; Howells realizes that even “realistic” art involves selection—arrangement of details so as to suggest “true proportion and relation” and not “monstrous disproportion” (p. 279). Therefore, despite Corey’s belief that novelists (who “try to imitate”) are very different from architects (who “create form”), the words Howells puts into Sey¬ mour’s mouth, comparing present architects with those of the past, may be applied to the artistry of Lapham itself: “I think we may claim a better feeling for structure. We use better material, and more wisely; and by and by we shall work out something more characteristic and original” (p. 270). The center of the book well illustrates how the “material” of everyday life, arranged in “char¬ acteristic” proportion, can be “original” through the illuminating metamorphosis that “structure” and form provide. V What we may call the fourth movement of the book, Chapters 16 through 19, is parallel in length to the opening movement but carries on the love plot of the second section, bringing to a close the twelve chapters devoted to that plot. This group of chapters, which has an interesting structure of its own, effectively serves to anticipate the final section, which concerns Silas’s decision to sacrifice material gain. Not only is the matter of self-sacrifice discussed here as a The Architecture of Rise of Silas Lapham I 2 I preparation for Silas’s business dilemma, but the way in which the Rogers affair is deliberately postponed because of the urgency of Penelope’s problem underlines the quality of anticipation associated with these chapters. When Silas returns home from the office, at the end of Chapter i6, he glares at Tom (who has just declared his love to Penelope) “out of his blue eyes with a fire that something else must have kindled there” (p. 313): he has been talking with Rogers. Then when Silas and his wife go riding (Chap. 18), he starts to bring up Rogers (who has been “getting in deeper and deeper” with him), but his wife refuses to listen and says, “There’s something a good deal more important than Rogers in the world, and more important than your business” (p. 328). This statement makes clear the structural importance of these chapters in two ways: first, it calls attention to the fact that the Rogers matter is being temporarily pushed aside (Howells wants to emphasize that he is consciously inserting the decisive action of the love plot here for a reason); second, it reveals a sense of perspective in its ordering of values, which is to be Silas’s chief gain in this section—and one that will aid him in his coming decision. He may once in a while slip back to the purely monetary standard of the “new rich,” as when he says that he has a right to consult his minister because he has “contributed enough money" to the church (p. 334); but generally now he can say, “We don’t either of us want anything but the children’s good. What’s it all of it for, if it ain’t for that?” (p. 331). So this matter which is “a good deal more important than Rogers” takes priority; and, since it is, after all, the “rise” of Silas that we are interested in, this prior experience provides a frame of reference that makes Silas’s final decision all the more meaningful. These chapters are highly concentrated in time as well as in their attention to the Tom-Penelope relationship. They cover only three days, beginning on the evening of the day after the dinner party and ending about seventy-two hours later, when Tom calls on Penelope after Irene and her mother have left for the town of Lapham; there is then a break of a week before the next section begins in Chapter 20. References to time are correspondingly made more precise: allusions are not to the seasons but to days and hours. We know that the conversation between Penelope and Tom 122 G. Thomas Tanselle (Chap. i6)^® occurs three hours after Tom leaves Silas’s oflEce (p. 299). Chapter 17 opens at breakfast the next morning, with Silas making detailed comments about his usual rising schedule; after he leaves, Mrs. Lapham talks with Penelope, who reveals Tom’s dis¬ closure of the night before. When Mrs. Lapham sends a message to Silas at the ofi&ce, he replies that he can meet her at “half-past two” (p. 325), and their ride and discussion of what Penelope should do are the subject of Chapter 18. At suppertime, scarcely forty- eight hours after the Corey dinner, Mrs. Lapham informs Irene that Tom is not in love with her (Chap. 19, p. 342); this is on Saturday, because Silas tells Irene that “to-morrow’s Sunday” (p. 346), and Irene decides she can wait until Monday to go to Lapham. The chapter ends on Monday night: one chapter is thus devoted to Fri¬ day night, two and a half to Saturday, and the last half of Chapter 19 to Sunday and Monday. The pace has been slowed in order to concentrate on Saturday, the day when the Laphams are torturing themselves trying to decide what Penelope should do. Meanwhile, Irene, who tries to make her “sacrifice complete” by performing such services as delivering Penelope’s breakfast to her with “an heroic pretense” that she is doing nothing unusual, is not, obviously, the only one overplaying her role. The important “sacri¬ fice” here is Penelope’s, and the chief unifying device of these chap¬ ters is the repeated comparison of this “sacrifice” with the self-sacri¬ fice in sentimental fiction. During the love scene between Tom and Penelope (Chap. 16), it is Penelope who criticizes the “self- sacrifice” in such novels, says that it is not true sacrifice, calls it “wicked,” and pleads for “reasonable” behavior (pp. 305-306); she concludes that, while “reasonable behavior” would be unusual in fiction, “so it would in real life.” She has been reading Tears, Idle Tears, the novel discussed at the dinner, and Sewell, who struck out against the book then, returns to the subject of fiction when the Laphams call on him for advice. He enunciates his famous doctrine of economy of pain, asserting that the “false ideal of self-sacrifice” comes from “the novels that befool and debauch almost every in¬ telligence in some degree” (p. 339). Then when Tom calls again— the scene in which Penelope refuses him at the end of Chapter 19— This chapter opens with a description of the horrors of the Lapham drawing room, just as Chapter 14, when the Laphams enter the Coreys’ house, begins with comments on its “perfect taste.” The Architecture of Rise of Silas Laphatn 123 he reminds her of what she had said three nights before about the foolishness of the heroine’s actions in the book, and he asks how her own situation is in any way different (p. 361). Penelope reaches her crucial decision at this point in the novel not merely to provide an instance of false sacrifice to be contrasted with Silas’s business sacrifice but to demonstrate the essential sound¬ ness of Silas’s judgment, when not encumbered with complicating factors of ambition, money, and prestige. He presents his problem to Sewell with “simple dignity” and finds his own first thoughts corroborated. Both he and his wife had instinctively seen the sense of the “economy-of-pain” solution,^® but they thought that it must be wrong because their social “rise” had very nearly destroyed their sense of values. Mrs. Lapham had told Penelope, almost immedi¬ ately, “I couldn’t say you had done wrong, if you was to marry him to-day” (p. 319); when the shocked Penelope describes the course of self-sacrifice that seems attractive to her, Mrs. Lapham says, “Your father would think you were a fool” (p. 323)—and Howells refers to “her strong disgust for the pseudo heroism.”"® That the whole matter involves, at bottom, the very salvation of one’s soul becomes increasingly evident through the diction. It is not simply a question of going to a minister, who points out that the false ideal of self-sacrifice “certainly doesn’t come from Christianity” (p. 339); it is a process of discovery that one is part of “a great community of wretchedness which has been pitilessly repeating itself from the foundation of the world” (p. 336). Silas wrestles with the problem “like a man who meditates a struggle with su¬ perior force” (p. 330), and his wife, accustomed “to seek the light by striving,” recognizes “the curse of prosperity” and fears the results of Silas’s “pride and ambition” (pp. 324-325). When Mrs. Lapham later hears Silas pacing the floor and compares him to Jacob wrestling with an angel, the reader thinks back to this epi¬ sode, when the family can hear Irene “stirring about in her own room, as if she were busy about many things” (p. 349). The strug- The term is Sewell’s (p. 338). Howells also explored this idea, as Carter points out (p. 165), in Indian Summer (1886). This is not to say that one should not think of others. Lapham tells Penelope that the affair concerns other people, just as the Coreys had brought Tom to see, by the end of Chapter 15, that their whole family was involved. Silas says, “Recollect that it's my business, and your mother’s business, as well as yours, and we’re going to have our say” (P- 355 )- 124 G. Thomas Tanselle gle is one of the. life or death of the soul, and both Penelope (p. 323) and Silas (p. 332) say that the dilemma is worse than death. We have moved in this section from Tom’s declaration of love (Chap. 16) to Penelope’s refusal (the last scene of Chap. 19); what has happened in between has prepared Silas for his next trial and has shown that he will now be able to meet it. If the daughters’ behavior seems rather exaggerated here, Howells has himself pro¬ vided the comment on it (and on the internal consistency of art) in Penelope’s statement about Tears, Idle Tears (pp. 305-306): “the naturalness of all the rest makes that seem natural too.” VI This principle, enunciated by Penelope, may be helpful in ana¬ lyzing several troublesome aspects of the last part of the novel. It may first be said, however, that the last eight chapters complete the symmetry of the book. With their emphasis on Silas’s business decision, they round out the twelve chapters devoted to the bank¬ ruptcy plot and bring to a conclusion matters introduced in the first four chapters. Further than that, they make a final integration of the two plots and show each member of the Lapham family going through a similar process of inward struggle and hard-won relief. Chapter 20 provides the transition by bringing the treachery of Rogers into the open and following that revelation with a scene between Tom and his mother (in which Mrs. Corey is just as dis¬ mayed to learn that Penelope is the object of Tom’s attentions as Penelope herself was in the opening chapter of the preceding move¬ ment). The next two chapters take us deeper into the Rogers affair and the temptation offered by “those English parties”; they also make further connections between the plots, as when Mrs. Lapham feels that her husband’s troubles may help bring Penelope out of her depression (pp. 398-400). The fourth chapter of this part (Chap. 23) shows Tom in a positive action (not just in being talked about); parallel to the fourth chapter of the earlier eight-chapter sec¬ tion (Chap. 8), in which Tom begins work at the Lapham office, he now offers to put his own money into the firm (thus constituting another in a series of temptations for Silas, a series which mounts in intensity). This chapter defines the organization of the last part of the novel in a conversation between Penelope and her father: The Architecture of Rise of Silas Lapham 125 “I presume you know I’m in trouble,” he says, to which her reply is, “We all seem to be there” (p. 404).^^ Her remark suggests not only the way in which each member of the family faces a problem of his own (or will face one soon) and the way in which all Lap- ham’s problems seem to be reaching a crisis at once and piling up on each other, but also (and more important) the manner in which each individual decision affects the well-being of others. From here on, the interrelated problems do seem to fall, in ac¬ celerating pace, on Lapham’s shoulders. The last half of Chapter 23 brings the Zerrilla plot to a crisis (with the first direct presenta¬ tion of Zerrilla’s family—Lapham goes to her flat “in the extremity in which a man finds relief in combating one care with another,” p. 415). In the next chapter (besides Penelope’s reaction to Tom’s offer of money) comes Silas’s resolution to sell his house, followed by its destruction (just after the expiration of the insurance) in the fire that Silas has himself started. One by one, the ways out of his financial crisis are eliminated. In Chapter 25 Lapham makes his last frantic efforts to extricate himself from his difficulties—by seeing Bellingham, then “those West Virginia people,” then the English agents at the hotel. His last temptation, to sell to Rogers who has full knowledge of the value of the property, is successfully passed by the end of the chapter. All that remains is to bring everything full circle. Chapter 26 concerns the failure of Mrs. Lapham’s strict but shallow morality (“her instant and steadfast perception of right and wrong, and the ability to choose the right to her own hurt,” p. 471) in yielding to the temptation of suspecting her husband of infidelity; the chapter shows “how she had forsaken him in his hour of trial” (p. 471) and, on top of that, had added another prob¬ lem to his load. After Mrs. Lapham hears Zerrilla’s story in Silas’s office and after Irene has returned (during Tom’s visit with Penel¬ ope at the end of Chapter 26), the way is open for a “rise” in each of them in the final chapter. Mrs. Lapham realizes how foolishly she has behaved and how much she has let her husband down; Silas has shown strength, in contrast to his wife, and is ready to accept financial ruin rather than submit to temptation; Penelope reverses her earlier decision not to marry Tom because she now This conversation, in which both Silas and Penelope are speaking of their own affairs, is similar to the one in the next chapter between Silas and his wife, when they realize “that they had each been talking of a different offer” (p. 426). 126 G. Thomas Tanselle sees the falsity of self-sacrifice in her case, in contrast to the necessity of it in her father’s; and Irene can now place her disappointment in proper perspective, for she has “toughened and hardened,” has “lost all her babyish dependence and pliability,” and is “like iron” (p. 489). This process of transformation in Irene is one that all four have passed through: “It had been a life and death struggle with her; she had conquered, but she had also necessarily lost much. Perhaps what she had lost was not worth keeping; but at any rate she had lost it.” Silas had lost his fortune but had gained the knowledge that the integrity he began with was worth more. Although people had said that Mrs. Lapham “was marrying beneath her when she took him” (p. 477), Silas’s basic good sense and refusal to compromise (reaffirmed for him both in Penelope’s case and in his own by Sewell, who visits the Laphams in the last scene of the book) show that his wife is the one who must rise to meet his standard, not the reverse. Social distinctions, like monetary ones, have little relevance to true value—by the end the Laphams did not think “that their daughter was marrying a Corey; they thought only that she was giving herself to the man who loved her” (p. 506). In this world the adherence to principle will result in loss, if not in self-destruc¬ tion, but peace of mind can be purchased in no other way; Silas’s temptation, suffering, and loss are the price he pays for the privilege of returning to the hills of Vermont, where he began. With this paradox (imphed by the ambiguity of “rise”) at the heart of the book, it is not surprising that the Christian overtones, noticed earlier, are developed in this last part of the book, for most of Jesus’s para¬ bles are based on the same paradox. The metaphor of struggle spreads out through the book from the important passage at the end of Chapter 25, when Mrs. Lapham, hearing Silas pace the floor all night, thinks of Jacob wrestling with the angel (p. 467; Gen. 32: 24, 26, 27, is quoted). Before that. Walker had spoken of Lapham as having “a drownin’ man’s grip round [Rogers’s] neck” (p. 382); Silas later finds “every pulse throbbing with the strong temptation,” the decision making him “groan in spirit” (pp. 460-461). The struggle is one against temptations raised up by the devil (“it wan’t Providence^' says Silas—p. 393), and Lapham in Chapter 25 faces his “tempter” (p. 465), Rogers, refusing to help him “whip the devil The Architecture of Rise of Silas iMpham 127 round the stump,” despite Rogers’s invocation of the “Golden Rule” (p. 462) and his reminder that the Englishmen are “Christian gen¬ tlemen.” Rather, Silas upholds a “mere idea” (p. 463); he realizes that Rogers’s offer to buy the mill property would release him legally of whatever guilt might be involved in the resale to the English agents, but he “was standing out alone for nothing” as “any one else would say” (p. 466). This “nothing,” however, has come to mean everything to him. He tells Rogers, “You know that what you’ve said now hasn’t changed the thing a bit.” And he ends by moving into the old Vermont farmhouse instead of into a new mansion “on the water side of Beacon.” The house in Vermont that the Laphams return to is “plain,” with “no luxuries” and “no furnace in the winter” (p. 513). The family’s fortunes have throughout been spoken of in terms of houses, the social symbols of success. Mrs. Lapham expresses the alternatives that sum up the book when she says she will be happy whether they “go on to the Back Bay, or go back to the old house at Lapham” (p. 390). When Penelope learns of her father’s dif¬ ficulties, her first question is, “Shall we have to stay in this house ?” (p. 396); and when the Coreys come to visit their future daughter- in-law, she decides “that they should know the worst at once” and “let[s] ^em have the full brunt of the drawing-room” (p. 490). If the Nankeen Square house is in contrast to the Coreys’, it is no less so to the Vermont farmhouse. And, despite the social preten¬ tiousness of the Back Bay, Lapham’s Vermont house and his Back Bay house are not so far apart; his natural dignity had met a responsive note in Seymour, and he had come to understand what the architect was guiding him toward. The design of the Back Bay house “appealed to him as an exquisite bit of harmony appeals to the unlearned ear” (p. 438); he could see “the satisfying simplicity of the whole design and the delicacy of its detail.” The window in James’s house of fiction through which Howells looked presents a view organized on these same architectural principles. VII This much said, there still remain some vaguely dissatisfying elements in the structure of the last part of the book. The question of the relationship of the two plots, however, is surely no longer 128 G. Thomas Tanselle one of these. They are so thoroughly intertwined and so carefully arranged to support each other that their management should rather be regarded as one of the triumphs of the novel. The subtlety of Howells’s design is overlooked when one agrees with Fir kin s that “the bankruptcy story is... so much of a laggard that it has almost the look of a trespasser,” or with Scudder’s similar remark, in his review of the book, about “how little the rise of this hero is really connected with the circumstances which make up the main incidents of the story.”^^ There can be no doubt that the two plots support each other, as Donald Pizer has demonstrated, in affirming a utili¬ tarian ethic, with its subordination of individual good to the good of the whole and with its emphasis (as Harry Hayden Clark has noted) on individual responsibility and free will."^ Rather, one’s legitimate feeling of dissatisfaction here may be traced to four ele¬ ments: (i) the occurrence of the fire, and particularly when it melodramatically comes just after the insurance has expired; (2) the presence of the Zerrilla plot; (3) the telescoping of events in the last chapter; and (4) the suggestions, in the last part, of tragic overtones in what had been, up to then, a comedy of manners—the “lapse in tone” which George Arms discusses (p. xvi). The first two are related, as are the last two, and all will remain, in varying degrees, blemishes on an otherwise imposing edifice.^* In terms of the structure as we have been viewing it here, the Zerrilla story is a much more serious problem than the fire. It may be true that when Silas tries out his fireplace the reader feels sure the house is going to burn down; and when, on top of that, the in¬ surance has just run out, the reader may decide that the hackneyed devices of the soap opera are overtaking the book. This is probably part of what Everett Carter had in mind when he called the ^“Firkins, pp. 71-72; Horace E. Scudder, Atlantic Monthly, LVI, 554-556 (Oct., 1885). Pizer, in the article cited earlier, says, “I do not wish to intimate that Howells consciously employed the ethical ideas of Mill. Rather, I believe that the similarity be¬ tween Mill’s utilitarianism and the ethical principles of The Rise of Silas Lapham is probably the result of parallel attempts to introduce the ethical teachings of Christ within social contexts and yet avoid supernatural sanctions” (p. 325). Clark’s discussion of the “traditional Christian ethics” of the novel is on p. x of his Modern Library introduction. This does not mean that there are no other minor flaws. For example, the point of view is perhaps not thoroughly consistent, with such phrases as the following; “but Mrs. Lapham could not know this, and did not deserve to know it” (p. 267); “a certain generosity of instinct, which I should not be ready to say was always infallible” (p. 413); “Mrs. Corey, whose thoughts ca, not always be reported” (p. 486); “Whether Penelope ...found it more difhcult to harmonise, I cannot say” (p. 508). The Architecture o£ Rise of Silas Lapham 129 handling of the house symbol “mechanical.”"^ But objections to the fire and its circumstances are based on criteria of probability—that is, of “realism”—and it is here that the contrast with the Zerrilla story becomes meaningful. Whatever connections may be found between the Zerrilla affair and the main plots (there have, of course, been foreshadowings of it and allusions to it throughout the book; and it furnishes another example of marital relationships to be con¬ trasted with the Laphams, the Coreys, the Hubbards, and Penelope and Tom), it nevertheless remains an element not smoothly blended into the larger structure. Presumably it is there because in Howells's theory of realism various aspects of life are to be represented in due proportion; Zerrilla is Howells’s concession to the more sordid side of “realism,” but the matter occupies no larger place in the book, he would say, because it is no more important than that in life. The same theory of realism, however, cannot account for both the Zerrilla episode and the fire. Despite Howells’s reiteration of the fidelity of fiction to real life (and his professed dislike of the “fettering control” of plot as unnatural), he did understand that art necessarily involves selection, and that selection, a conscious process, automatically produces a structure which is artificial in the sense that it does not exist in nature. The test is not, then, whether the Zerrilla story is true to life in its proportions, but whether it is true to the proportions of the work, whether it is “probable” in the Aristotelian sense of harmonizing with internal consistency rather than being “possible” in terms of the world outside the work. This is what Penelope meant when she spoke of the naturalness of one incident in a book being determined by the naturalness of the whole. One cannot ultimately judge a novel except as a work of art, and on these grounds the fire is “probable” in a way the Zerrilla In both Howells and the Age of Realism (pp. 164-169) and his introduction to the Harper Modern Classics edition (New York, 1958), Carter emphasizes the signifi¬ cance of the house as a symbol and as a comment on Howells’s art. It is his contention that the "small, tight, almost allegorical construction” of the book “makes us feel smallness and constriction, instead of greatness and expansion and complexity” (p. 169) and is therefore inadequate in a work which involves a feeling for the welfare of society as a whole. The present analysis has attempted to show, on the contrary, that the organic unity of the plots, architectural symbolism, and seasonal metaphors invests the events with universal significance and enhances rather than restricts the commission of the “enormous feat of the imagination” necessary to perceive a truth about the social organism (with its “almost complete absence of personality”) in “dramatic and imaginative” terms. 130 G. Thomas Tanselle Story is not. Edwin Cady’s likening of the book to a morality play^® is a useful way of seeing that it is more than “realistic”: the destruc¬ tion of the house through Silas’s own actions is a prerequisite to his rise, both metaphorically and because it pushes him to the last ex¬ tremity, setting up the proper conditions, as in a laboratory, for the final test. If the device represented by the fire-and-insurance busi¬ ness ordinarily seems trite through its unskilful use in inferior works, its universal validity and its effectiveness should nevertheless be recognized when the episode is set in the framework of such a “satisfying simplicity” of design, observable by even the “unlearned” eye, that it may be considered a classic example of the pattern. The other two matters, relating to pace and tone, require less discussion, though they are greater defects. The last chapter refers to events taking place during a period of five years and is saved only by the concluding conversation between the Sewells and the Lap- hams from becoming a typical nineteenth-century final-chapter summing up of the fortunes of the characters. George Arms’s belief that “the amount of summary narrative [near the end] is relatively too great for the book to hold” (p. xiv) is really applicable only to the last chapter, for it is only there that the shift in narrative method is perceptible enough to be a jarring element in the internal “naturalness.” But the occasional thrusts in that chapter beyond the limits of the main structure do constitute violations of the architectural symmetry. This flaw, however, is a far less serious one (quantitatively and qualitatively) than the “lapse in tone” of which it is a function (since, as the tone grows in solemnity, the tendency increases to state directly rather than to reveal through dramatic scenes). The question of tone is perhaps not strictly part of a dis¬ cussion of structure, but it can at least be said (as partial qualifica¬ tion of Arms’s excellent point) that Howells takes advantage of In The Road to Realism: The Early Years, 18^7-1885, of William Dean Howells (Syracuse, 1956), p. 236, and in his introduction to the Riverside edition (Boston, 1956), pp. vi, viii, Cady describes Lapham moving “through a series of morality plays”; he finds the book made up of Silas’s growth plus "two other large movements,” one focusing on Mrs. Lapham, the other on the Coreys; he pronounces the Zerrilla episode the "least well- digested part of Lapham"-, he labels the paradox of the rise and fall “an antidote against the falsity of the Horatio Alger tradition”; and he sees in the novel “a concept of form” derived from Turgenev, an “objective” and “dramatic” method. Despite the “dramatic” and “scenic” quality of the novel’s structure, Howells had difficulty in dramatizing it, and James A. Herne disliked Howells’s adaptation of it for the stage—see Herbert Edwards, “Dramatization of The Rise of Silas Lapham," New England Quarterly, XXX, 235-243 (June, 1957). The Architecture of Rise of Silas Lapham 131 opportunities for social comedy to the end (as in the Coreys’ reac¬ tions to the Lapham drawing room in the last chapter) and that the serious implications of comedy of manners are present from the start (as in the insight with which the Hubbard interview is handled or in the reference to “Christian sufferings”). A much better defense of Howells’s ending is provided by William Manierre, who argues that the last third of the book rightly moves more slowly to empha¬ size the “gradual and grinding nature” of Lapham’s financial de¬ cline and the isolation of the individual at a time of moral decision.”^ But these observations still do not explain away the undeniable presence of a fundamental shift, one that may be described as from understatement to overstatement, and one which is the most serious weakness of the novel. That there is no major weakness, however, in the construction of Lapham has been the contention of this analysis. It is impossible, of course, to consider structure apart from other elements; if Lapham seems impressive in organization, it is only because the basic conception of the whole is sound. A different structure would mean a different novel with different significance. Some readers may be inclined to feel that Howells builded better than he knew: but any such assumption about intent, ungenerous or not, becomes irrelevant in the face of a sturdy framework resting squarely on its foundation, giving form to the rooms within and yet shaped by them. As Silas says, “Everybody builds, at least once in a lifetime.” Manierre, pp. 360-361. His point is that the technique of “retrospective discussion” stresses the relativity of various viewpoints and therefore suggests a fragmented society, one which offers Silas no absolute principles and leaves him only with his own individual judgment: thus Howells’s shift from dramatic impartiality to an “involved” concern with “a single center of perception” is both “logical” and “inevitable” (p. 359). William McMurray, in “The Concept of Complicity in Howells’ Fiction,” New England Quarterly, XXXV, 489-496 (1962), also finds the “pattern of movement” in Lapham’s social involve¬ ment. Howells and Ade Jack Brenner L ike the antimacassar, George Ade has largely gone out of style. We remember him, if at all, as the author of the Fables in Slang, those satirical sketches that appear on the page liberally salted with capital letters, bearing such titles as “The Fable of the Preacher Who Flew His Kite, But Not Because He Wished to Do So.” That we should remember Ade as a fabulist is an appropriately ironic postscript to an ironist’s career, since he seems to have regarded the Fables as his least important work. In fact, the evidence is strong that Ade was embarrassed by his success in slangy journal¬ ism; his sizable weekly royalty checks seem to have furnished him melancholy proof that he was a hack catering to an audience with no standards and no judgment. In letters, articles, even in fables, Ade expressed the discomfort of the new millionaire who has not been admitted to the club; throughout his long and markedly profitable career, he repeated his desire “to be known as a realist with a compact style and a clean Anglo-Saxon vocabulary and the courage to observe human virtues and frailties as they showed on the lens.”^ While Ade never wrote the “photographic” novel that he ap¬ parently needed to reassure himself of his own worth, his wish to be regarded as a realist was not empty posturing. His early work— Artie (1896), Pinl^ Marsh (1897), and Doc' Horne (1899)—was humorous realism, and it brought him warm praise from some of the most important literary figures in America. Mark Twain, Wil¬ liam Dean Howells, and Hamlin Garland were among his ad¬ mirers; all three expressed praise as fulsome as Mencken’s: “Here the veritable Americano stands forth, lacking not a waggery, a superstition, a snuffle or a wen.”^ Twain’s enthusiasm was expressed with no less spirit; in a letter to Howells he said of Ade’s Pin\ Marsh: ^Quoted in Fred Kelly, George Ade: Warmhearted Satirist (New York, 1947), p. no. * Henry L. Mencken, “George Ade,” Prejudices: A Selection, ed. James Farrell (New York, 1958), p. 14. Howells and Ade 133 Thank you once more for introducing me to the incomparable Pink Marsh. . . . my admiration of the book has overflowed all limits, all frontiers. I have personally known each of the characters in the book & can testify that they are all true to the facts, & as exact as if they had been drawn to scale. And how effortless is the limning! it is as if the work did itself, without help of the master’s hand. Pink—oh, the shifdess, worthless, lovable black darling! Howells, he deserves to live forever.® I But particularly interesting is Howells’s view of Ade. As Ade’s earliest and perhaps most influential advocate, Howells appropriated the early books for use as ammunition in his running battle with Romanticism. His high estimate, therefore, represents Howells’s conception of humor and its function in realistic fiction. Moreover, in Ade’s poor-cousin attitude toward himself, an attitude that stemmed in part from Ade’s deep respect for Howells, we may discern another outcropping of the remarkable American idea that humor is somehow not respectable. And finally, Howells’s enthu¬ siasm reminds us that Ade was a deft craftsman and that his humor does not depend upon outworn slang for its effect. The man who could write about the music teacher who came twice a week to bridge the awful gap between Dorothy and Chopin should not be regarded with mere antiquarian interest. In 1898, Howells reviewed Ade’s Artie, saying that “On the level which it consciously seeks, I do not believe there is a better study of American town life in the West.”^ He was even more impressed by Pinl{ Marsh and Doc Horne; speaking of them, he said: “No cataloguing of the excellencies of these books would give a notion of their people so frankly, so boldly and yet so delicately defined, so unmistakably shown, so undeniably true.” Doc’ Horne was “a masterful character,” and Ade had portrayed “the whole vast droll American world, essentially alike in Maine and Oregon and all the hustling regions between: speaking one slang, living one life, meaning one thing.”® ^ Mark. Twain-Howells Letters, ed. H. N. Smith and W. M. Gibson (Cambridge, Mass., i960), II, 832. ‘"Chicago in Fiction,” Literature, II, 758 (July 2, 1898). ‘ “Certain of the Chicago School of Fiction,” North American Review, CLXXVI, 740 (May, 1903). 134 Jack Brenner Howells’s enthusiasm is further illustrated by his invitation to Ade in 1900 to be one of “twenty leading American and English authors” in a series of novels he had agreed to edit. Even though Howells withdrew from this publishing venture,® he urged Ade to send the promised novel to the publishing house of Harpers, and he also asked Ade to submit shorter material to Harpers Week¬ ly. Ade did not respond to these friendly overtures; in fact, he never wrote the novel, nor did he ever complete a full-length novel. {Artie, Fin\ Marsh, and Doc’ Horne were revised compilations of material that had first appeared in a daily column written for the Chicago Record.) It may be that Howells felt a rebuff in the younger man’s behavior, for the two stopped corresponding in 1902, and after writing a highly flattering article on Ade and other Chicago writers in 1903,^ Howells did not again comment publicly on Ade’s work until 1917. But whatever the reason for the hiatus, Howells had not lost his admiration for Ade’s work. In the 1917 essay, he implied that Ade was a greater humorist than was Mark Twain in his later years. Twain had become a black “satirist with¬ out hope or faith” in The Mysterious Stranger, while Ade had avoided the corrosiveness of satire and had remained a humorist. In a revealing statement which indicates that Howells’s dislike of extremes applied to humor as well as to romantic fiction, he said, “we have been kept from the worst by the humorist’s smile, not by the satirist’s frown.”® Even though Howells’s accolades of Ade were tempered by his conviction that Ade had somewhat squandered his talent in writing the Fables —I shall speak of this later—his estimate now seems to us extravagant. But Howells had very good reasons for esteeming Ade’s work. He saw in Ade a fellow realist, a writer who by cast of mind and choice of technique was committed to the principles that Howells had so long espoused. A closer look at Ade’s early work will indicate why this was so. II For seven years, from November 20, 1893, to November 7, 1900, George Ade wrote a daily column called “Stories of the Streets and ^ See Richard Crowder, “American Nestor: Six Unpublished Letters from Howells to Ade,” Buc^nell Review, VII, 144-149 (March, 1958). ’’ “Certain of the Chicago School of Fiction.” '“Editor’s Easy Chair,” Harper's Magazine, CXXXIV, 444 (Feb., 1917). Howells and Ade 135 of the Town” for the Chicago Record. The “Stories” which re¬ sulted from the daily pressure of producing twelve to eighteen hundred words and from Ade’s wanderings in the city are varied. They range from photographic renderings of city scenes through short fiction to burlesque and fantasy; in 1897 Fables in Slang began to appear. There were also columns in which certain charac¬ ters reappeared: Doc’ Horne and his friends at the Alfalfa European hotel; Artie Blanchard, a slangy, brash young oflSce worker; and Pink Marsh, a Negro bootblack. When collected, these columns furnished the material for the books that bore the names of their main characters. Doc Horne, one of these books, was a particular favorite of Howells’s, and a brief examination of the techniques and attitudes embodied in the book reveals the reasons for his critical acclaim of Ade. The story details the life and times of Doc’ Horne, a courtly and amiable old liar whose title seems purely honorary, among the denizens of the Alfalfa European Hotel. Among these are the Lightning Dentist, who dreams of love in his tooth-extracting em¬ porium; the Hustler, who involves Doc’ in a swindle; the Lush, who often drinks enough to be frank, thereby wounding Doc’; and a host of others. Doc Horne is not a novel. It has, strictly speaking, no structure; there is no plot, and whatever unity it achieves is a result of con¬ sistent character portrayal. Apparently Ade did little revising of the column material when it was collected; as a result, the book does not lead to either a question or to a resolution. Its ending is more properly termed a suspension; Ade adopts the expedient of having the hotel torn down to make way for an office building, and when their common bond is destroyed. Doc’ and his court of listeners scatter. While Howells did not speak directly of structure, or the lack of it, he did laud Ade for his “wonderful directness” and his freedom from “literary pose,”® and I assume that he was referring to the natural and realistic impression of experience given by the discontinuous, unformed narrative. We remember that Howells objected to strong plots as a distortion of reality, and in his own * "Certain of the Chicago School of Fiction,” p. 740. 136 Jack Brenner novels he depended upon his “bulldog grip” on character rather than imposed lines of action to keep the story moving. It is possible, however, that Howells was not pointing to total structure in these remarks, but rather to a more precisely technical consideration: the employment of point of view. The opening page of Doc’ Horne indicates Ade’s coign of van¬ tage: “If they had built the Mississippi levees as I told them to, long before the war, they wouldn’t be washed away every year,” said Doc’ Horne. “You’ve been through that flood country, have you. Doc’?” asked the Lush. “As often as you have fingers and toes,” replied Doc’. “I think it was in 1857 1 went out from Cairo. . . “Those floods must be awful,” said the dentist. “My uncle didn’t think so,” remarked the Lush.^® The point of view utihzed here is that of the rigidly self-effaced narrator. There is no setting of scene and, except for the type-names, no auctorial comment upon characters; each character defines and introduces himself by what he says. The technique is more “ob¬ jective” than even reportorial journalism, since the reporter must frame his story. Here the reader is dropped into an amiable con¬ versation among strangers and left to draw his own conclusions. In its humble way, the narrative strategy is Flaubertian—a natural consequence of Ade’s own literary convictions and of the journal¬ istic practices of the day. Ade’s column was never signed, and he rigorously excluded himself from his material; he tells us: “I peered thr ough the camera for seven years and never stood in front of it once. The compositors... never had to reach for an upper-case i>] 1 The problem of point of view was of central concern for Howells’s theory of realism. He inveighed against the “romantic machinery” of popular fiction; Thackeray, for example, Howells regarded as a minor artist because he allowed himself so much visibility in his fiction: he “had so little artistic sensibility, that he never hesitated... to make a foray among his characters, and catch Doc’ Horne (Chicago and New York, 1899), p. i. ^'Quoted in George Adc, Stories of the Streets and of the Town, ed. Franklin Meine (Chicago, 1941), p. X. Howells and Ade 137 them up to show them to the reader and tell him how beautiful or ugly they were.”^^ Ade, on the other hand, “does not prepare his specimens, or arrange a point of view for you... [he] would not think of explaining or apologizing or at all accounting for the company he invites you to keep.”^^ And it was not only the manner in which Ade presented his characters that appealed to Howells’s credo of realism: Ade’s choice of the commonplace for material also pleased him. “You are not asked to be interested in any one because he is in any way out of the common, but because he is every way in the common,”^^ Howells said. The depiction of the average, the etching of the “good, kind, droll” facets of American life offered Howells proof of Ade’s democratic spirit. Moreover, in the early work Ade was at his best in reproducing the daily language of his characters. He accepted the strictures of polite usage, as he had to, but he was a close student of Chicago and Midwestern speech. (When the young Booth Tarkington came to the city for a visit, one of the first at¬ tractions that Ade exhibited to him was a girl at a cigar counter who spoke a rich, racy slang.) Ade’s fidelity in reproducing “real” speech impressed Howells. And finally, Howells assigned to Ade’s warm humor an important moral role. It was not intended to wound nor to offer idle entertainment; it was “democratic” humor because it did not place itself above its targets. If Ade’s humor is satire, Howells said, it is “of a candid complicity with the thing satirized—our common American civilization, namely—which satire has never confessed before.”^'’ Thus, Howells discerned in Ade’s early work both techniques and attitudes that accorded with his own theory of realism. It was his high estimate of Ade’s promise as a realistic novelist that led him to qualify his praise for the Fables in Slang. Ill Ade called his first Fable, published in the Record on September 17, 1897, “simply a little experiment in outlawry.”'® It was “The Criticism and Fiction (New York, 1892), p. 75. “Certain of the Chicago School of Fiction,” p. 740. “ Ibid. Ibid., p. 741. Quoted in Kelly, p. 138. 138 Jack Brenner Fable of Sister Mae Who Did As Well As Could Be Expected,” a story of virtue unrewarded in two sisters: Luella, a good girl whose “Clothes were an Intermittent Fit,” and Sister Mae, who was “Short on Intellect but Long on Shape.” When he wrote this, Ade said later, he had no intention of carving out a career as a fabulist; he was merely trying to fill his column. But the fable was immediately popular, and his friends and editors urged him to write more. Soon the Fables, with their pithy moral tags, were appearing regularly. Herbert Stone and Company, the publishers who had signed Ade to a contract for a novel, asked for a collection of Fables instead; the book was published in December, 1899, and sold 69,000 copies in 1900. Ade had hit a bonanza. However, it was a lode which caused him dismay, for he believed that he had cheapened himself by turning away from realistic fiction. The first Fables were written for money: “The idea was to grab a lot of careless money... and then... return to the consecrated job of writing long and photo¬ graphic reports of life in the Middle West.”^^ In 1902 he wrote to Howells: Four times I have given my ultimatum, “no more of this sickening slang,” and on each occasion Mr. Russell [Ade’s syndicator] has shown me the balance sheet and painted for me a picture of the mortgages being lifted from the old homestead in Indiana, and my resistance has become more feeble.^® He also responded to Howells’s suggestion that he write another Doc Horne by pointing out that the “picked-up and pitched-to¬ gether” volume had sold eight copies, while the Fables had sold more than four million, according to the “publisher’s statement.” In spite of his protestations that he would soon “swear off” capital letters, however, he continued to write fables, operettas, and light stage comedies. He never finished the much-discussed novel. Perhaps Ade expressed his dilemma in “The Fable of the Author Who Was Sorry for What He Did to Willie.”^® This fable recounts the misadventures of an author who scribbled a sentimental poem called “When Willie Came to Say Goodnight” to take his mind off a hangover. Even though the poem was deliberately bathetic, a Ibid., p. 156. ” Ibid. George Ade, Thirty Fables in Slang (New York, 1933), pp. 201-210. Howells and Ade 139 friend was impressed by it, as was the editor of a national magazine. Suddenly the author was famous. He “was sure the Public would come to its Senses some day and get after him with a Rope, but It didn’t.” His fame spread. In self-defense he spent two years writing a long and somber realistic novel; the reviewers greeted it by observing that the author of “Willie” must have written himself out, since the novel fell so far short of the poem. He then turned to lecturing on esoteric subjects, hoping to show that he possessed more intelligence than the poem indicated, but each time he spoke, the host would arrange for a small girl to recite “Willie” to the company. “The Author knew the Verses were Bad enough to be Wicked, but he had never guessed how Yellow they really were until he heard them recited by Little Girls who made the Full Stop at the Comma instead of the Period.” Finally he retreated to the suburbs, where he lived in seclusion with a Chinese servant who did not know he was a literary man; thus, he was able to forget for an hour or two at a time. The moral: Refrain from Getting Gay with the Emotions. If this is a wry mock directed at Ade’s public and at himself, it may be that Ade’s attitude was influenced by Howells’s criticism of the Fables. How much influence Howells had is impossible to assess accurately, of course, but we do know that Ade had high respect for Howells as a critic. He noted to his secretary on his copy of the 1917 Harper s article: “Don’t lose this. I am more proud of this article... than of anything else written about me.”^” Ade’s respect for Howells, coupled with Howells’s repeated urging that Ade write another Doc’ Horne, must have been significant factors in framing the ideas expressed in a 1920 article: “They Simply Wouldn’t Let Me Be a Highbrow.”'^ There Ade assessed his career, equating “highbrow” with “realist.” I don’t want to imply that Howells thought the Fables positively bad; on the contrary, he praised them. But his praise was always qualified; he saw in the achievement of the Fables evidence that Ade was not extending himself. In the 1917 review he said, for example, that Kelly, p. 144. American Magazine, XC, 50 et seq. (Dec. 1920). 140 Jack Brenner The Fables in Slang, which followed Mr. Ade’s earlier Chicago studies, are true histories of hfe, but they are not the fulfillment of the promise which these gave, and which remain the author’s hostages to criticism. ... If his talent too easily contents itself with perfection in the things which cannot be his greatest things, still it is a talent unrivaled in its sort.^^ In short, Howells had decided that fable humor was not serious enough for a man of Ade’s talent. I do not intend to argue the point, except to say that I think both Howells and Ade were too hard on Ade. It is true that many of the Fables are nothing more than gags propped up with capital letters, and Ade’s pious genu¬ flections toward realism appear empty indeed when viewed against his spectacular and long-lasting financial success. But as Mencken has observed, the Fables are the work of an accomplished literary craftsman: There is never any artfulness on the surface. The tale is never novel, or complex; it never surprises.... But underneath there is an artfulness infinitely well wrought, and that is the artfulness of a storyteller who dredges his story out of his people, swiftly and skillfully, and does not squeeze his people into his story, laboriously and unconvincingly.^^ Moreover, the open but deft humor of many of the Fables sur¬ vives: one remembers the lady who was invariably first over the fence in the mad pursuit of culture; the nice man who said “whom” and wore nose glasses; the banker whose side whiskers were a tower of strength in the community. And Ade’s humor may not have been so “good, kind, and droll” as Howells asserted: “The Fable of the Honest Money-Maker and the Partner of His Joys, Such as They Were”^^ concerns a farmer who works his wife to death. “Next Afternoon he was out Dickering for a Bull, and his Woman lying on the cheap Bedstead, up under the hot Roof, folded her lean Hands and slipped away to the only Rest she had known since she tied up with a Prosperous and Respected Farmer.” The Moral: Be Honest and Respected and it Goes. If Ade’s career exhibits more promise than fulfilment, if his avarice seems to have led him to ignore well-meaning advice from "Editor’s Easy Chair,” pp. 443 and 445. •’Mencken, p. 15. Thirty Fables in Slang, pp. 111-118. Howells and Ade 141 friends and critics, perhaps some explanation can be found in his awareness that certain idols might crumble. In “The Fable of the Slim Girl Who Tried to Keep a Date That Was Never Made,”^® Ade wrote a parable of blasted hopes that could be applied to realism. The slim girl whose “Soul Panted for the Higher Life,” who always wrote in autograph albums that Life is Real; Life is Earnest, And the Grave is not its Goal, was caught in a town “given over to croquet, Mush and Milk Sociables, a lodge for Elks and two Married Preachers who doc¬ tored for the Tonsilitis.” She led a lonely life waiting for her ideal: “a big, pensive Literary Man, wearing a Prince Albert coat, a neat Derby Hat and godlike Whiskers. When He came he would enfold Her in his Arms and whisper Emerson’s Essays to her.” She learned to recite Lucille without looking at the book and looked for him among the loafers and drummers on the hotel porch; but he never came. Finally she married a janitor w'ho had been kicked in the head by a mule and who believed everything he read in the Sunday papers. She wore a red Mother Hubbard for the rest of her life— invariably, Ade says, a “Sign of Blasted Hopes.” The Moral: Never Live in a Jay Town. Perhaps the promise that Howells thought he discerned in the realistic reproduction of American life had never been made; per¬ haps the “jay” town and the “four-flush” drummers and the janitor could never be wished or hoped or written into anything but what they were. It was fatuous to wait for the literary man; was it something better to capture the janitor? Even Ade, the solid Hoosier, saw it as a bleak marriage. Perhaps this was Why the Young Fabulist did not take the Advice of the Old Realist. Ibid., pp. 9-14. I am grateful to Professor George Arms for bringing the implica¬ tions of this Fable to my attention. The Dark Side of Their Wedding Journey Marion W. Cumpiano T hat William Dean Howells’s novels often present the dark underside of American life and of man’s existence as well as its “smiling aspects” is no longer a startling idea to readers of the lat¬ est criticism. A recent book^ by George C. Carrington, Jr., stresses the terrors of the mysterious, violent, alien, and often cruel world in which Howells’s characters are caught and struggle. Carrington’s thesis is that in Howells’s novels “the commonplace ... is potent and sometimes threatening,... plentifully offset by violence, horror, ‘blackness,’ and the other gothic traits admired by present-day critics.”^ This somber vision is most easily discernible in the novels of Howells’s maturity; but to assert that Their Wedding Journey, his first attempt at a novel, can be classed among the “dark novels” might be as jolting a statement as Lionel Trilling’s description of Robert Frost as a “terrifying” poet was at its first pronouncement. This idyll of the delightful honeymooners, Basil and Isabel March, whose journey takes them from Boston to Niagara, via New York, with return by way of Canada, has charmed readers since it began to appear in the pages of the Atlantic Monthly in 1871. An excellent travelogue, it is full of sprightly good humor and whimsy, delicate irony, and bits of realistic observations and comments on the American scene and human nature. These attractive features, however, have misled even those who recognize the tragic awareness in the novels of Howells’s prime, for unanimously they discount or disclaim the seriousness of this early work. Fryckstedt, for ex¬ ample, finds it devoid of the tragic aspects of human life which Howells would deal with later. He states categorically: 'George C. Carrington, Jr., The Immense Complex Drama: The World and Art oj the Howells Novel (Columbus, Ohio, 1966). See also .Marion W. Cumpiano, “Howells’ Bridges” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1966), which emphasizes the artistic means Howells employed to present dark aspects of the American scene and man’s life. “Carrington, p. 18. Their Wedding Journey 143 Howells’ first attempts in fiction . . . were notably free from any concern with the tragic aspects of human life. His early work recorded externals in a gay, bantering and complacent tone which at times bordered upon the gossipy. His adherence to the commonplace, solemnly proclaimed in Their Wedding Journey, was no doubt seriously meant but was hardly supported by any deeper vision of Ufe.^ Even Carrington, who detects moments of fear and tension in the wedding journey and cites several passages and images which reinforce the sense of a “nightmare hell” the Marches endure in their passage through New York City on a fearfully hot day, dis¬ misses the attempt rather lightly. Referring to one page in one chapter, the only one upon which he focuses at any length, he con¬ cedes that it suggests a pre-existing tendency toward the later more serious vision. He concludes, however, that in this work “Howells is practicing his scales, not writing a Kafka novel.”^ It is very true that this book is no Kafkaesque novel nor is the tone somber and brooding as in a Hawthorne story; yet the same dark and mysterious universe, considered the province of a Haw¬ thorne or a Melville, is intimated. A casual remark made by Basil may serve as the key to this darker universe. Reconciled after their first brief but devastating quarrel, the honeymooners, now in the kindliest mood, are catching their last glimpse of Montreal. Isabel says with enthusiasm: “What a pleasant day we’ve had here! Doesn’t even our quarrel show coleur de rose in this light?” “One side of it," answered Basil dreamily, “but all the rest is blac\." (p. 138; italics mine)® When his bride bristles for an explanation, Basil satisfies her with the literal fact: “Why, the Nelson Monument, with the sunshine on it. . . .” The effect of the sunlight is “so fine” that it can cast a glow upon their quarrel as well as upon the column which does not commemorate the heroism, sufferings, or sacrifices of explorers, mis¬ sionaries, and settlers who struggled to build and keep the city. * Olov V. Fryckstedt, In Quest of America: A Study of Howells' Early Development as a Novelist (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), pp. 170-171. * Carrington, p. 150. 'William Dean Howells, Their Wedding Journey, ed. John K. Reeves (Bloomington, Ind., 1968). All quotations from this book are from this edition. In footnotes this book will be referred to as TWf. Page numbers will be inserted parenthetically in the text. 144 Marion W. Cumpiano To avoid being dazzled by the sunlight playing upon this novel, dark glasses will be donned to see how much of the rest is black. The first section of this paper will focus upon an enumeration of the many varied elements which make this less than an idyllic honeymoon trip. The second section will explore the artistic presen¬ tation of diction, imagery, symbolism, etc., which unifies these de¬ tails and suggests the terrifying potential below the surface of sunny, smiling American existence. I On the journey, deaths and catastrophes of all sorts occur fre¬ quently or are recounted. Danger lurks unexpected at all times or looms ominous. War, savagery, and evil are shown to be the heritage of the modern American; poverty, illness, pain, and death surround or assail him. The most beautiful setting appears to have had the most bloody history; the happiest marriage conceals the bitterest anguish. Stupidity and cruelty and ignorance beset man; and the most terrifying fact of all is that the best man and the best woman, at times, partake of the general depravity. Just as human stupidity, ignorance, cruelty, and wickedness are the nether side of the wholesome American character; so the feverish, backbreak¬ ing toil of the cities and the squalor of poverty are the dark side of the proud American scene; and savagery and bloodshed, the re¬ verse of heroic New World history. The thunderclap which interrupts Basil and Isabel’s first tenders of love seems to announce the condition of the journey upon which they are setting out. Leaving during “that terrible storm of June, 1870” (p. 4), an actual historic event, they glide through a series of threatening perils. Though they emerge unscathed, charmed by their love and American innocence, they hear of others, not so for¬ tunate, who have succumbed. The storm which erupted so savagely with hail and lightning makes their proposed first lap to New York by boat too hazardous to venture; but, though they leave by rail, the fury of the storm catches up with them the next night on the boat up the Hudson, which they have taken with a mistaken sense of security. Throughout much of the trip, stifling heat oppresses them. The final section of the first chapter and all of the ironically entitled Their Wedding Journey 145 second chapter, “A Midsummer Day’s Dream,” is taken up with the relation of the blazing horror and its devastating effect upon those unfortunates whom they encounter upon the burning streets of New York. They see only one victim of the sun, but Basil re¬ marks that sunstroke is a common occurrence. Though they escape the heat on their visit to Niagara and on their trip down the St. Lawrence, in these places they experience with trepidation the fearsome power of rapids, whirlpools, danger¬ ous precipices, and treacherous rocks: “Niagara, indeed, is an awful homicide; nearly every point of interest about the place has killed its man . . .” (p. 88). This sinister knowledge is constantly present. The fierce rapids and rushing cataracts recall to Basil the poem “Avery,” which commemorates the “well-known incident” of the death of the hero caught in the rapids. At Biddle Stairs there “is a notice that persons have been killed by pieces of rock from the precipice overhanging the shore below, and warning people that they descend at their peril” (p. 93). A road next to the precipice guarded by no parapet worries Isabel. The guides “tell ghastly stories” of those bodies of drowned men being caught into the whirl¬ pool (p. lOl). Passing the Canadian Rapids, “nine miles of stormy sea” (p. 118), “to the eye . . . certainly as threatening as the rapids above Niagara” (p. 118), inspires the women and children with excite¬ ment; but Basil silently fears what would happen if the crowded steamer should swing round a ledge. The skeleton of a steamer wrecked upon the rocks and “gnawed at still by the white-tusked wolfish rapids” (p. 119) is mute evidence of their danger. Nature is not the only threat. References abound in the text to train, steamboat, and bridge disasters. Each of the various con¬ veyances which the travelers take—trains, boats, bridges, elevators, cars, carriages—inspires fear. The night express for New York, which Basil and Isabel choose to travel in, deemed safer than the night boat, also has its perils: The two hundred miles it is to travel stretch before it, traced by those slender clews, to lose which is ruin, and about which hang so many dangers. The drawbridges that gape upon the way, the trains that stand smoking and steaming on the track, the rail that has borne the wear so long that it must soon snap under it, the deep cut where the overhang- 146 Marion W. Cumpiano ing mass of rock trembles to its fall, the obstruction that a pitiless malice may have placed in your path—you think of these after the jour¬ ney is done. . . . (p. 13) John K. Reeves quotes a selection from the manuscript of Their Wedding Journey, omitted in the printed edition, about the dan¬ gers of American railroads in which the passengers are “as liable to be maimed, smashed, drowned, and impaled as ever.”® Passage on the luxurious night boat up the Hudson becomes a frightful experience for Basil and Isabel when the catastrophe feared and avoided earlier actually takes place. Jolted out of their com¬ fortable sleep when their steamer wrecks another boat, the male passengers sit up talking of accidents they have had while traveling. One gentleman tells of the “fearful escape of his on the Erie Road, from being thrown down a steep embankment fifty feet high by a piece of rock that had fallen on the track” (p. 48). The news that the crew of the sunken boat has been rescued is followed shortly by the cry announcing that a man had been scalded. “And a burden was carried by from which fluttered, with its terrible regularity, that utterance of moral anguish” (p. 49). Other hazards besides railway and boat accidents also lie in wait. In “Niagara Revisited” Basil talks with a colored waiter in a depot restaurant about a famous accident in which the roof of a railway depot had fallen in. He is told that if it had crashed five minutes sooner, it would have killed about three hundred people. At Niagara the fragile-looking elevator, descending from the heights to the level of the rapids, instills mute terror in its passengers. Sus¬ pension bridges are especially to be feared; Isabel’s hysterical panic is later justified by the story of an actual occurrence in which the anchoring wires of one of these new-type bridges suddenly lost their grip and the bridge “crashed under the hapless passengers and they were launched from its height upon the verge of the fall and thence plunged, two hundred and fifty feet, into the ruin of the abyss” (p. 161). It is no wonder that upon the Marches’ safe return to Boston they are greeted with tears and kisses by Isabel’s aunt: “ ‘Oh, you dears!’ the good soul cried, ‘you don’t know how anxious I’ve been “John K. Reeves, “The Limited Realism o£ Howells’ Their Wedding Journey'' PMLA, LXXVII, 626 (Dec., 1962). Their Wedding Journey 147 about you; so many accidents happening all the time’” (p. 178). Though accidental death and ever-present calamity are in the hands of fate, failings which emanate from man’s own character and behavior are frequently met with. Basil often hears “the voice of the common imbecility and incoherence” (p. 47). “Stupid benig¬ nity” can be tolerated and even loved but the petty greed and cruelty of various incidents on the uncomfortable, dusty train can not be condoned. Basil, conscience-stricken that he had fallen so low as to share in the common laughter at an old, purblind German, de¬ nounces himself and his wife as harshly as he does the others for their “depravity” and “cruelty.” The inconsistency and “depravity” of virtuous ladies, including Isabel, may be viewed mock-seriously when it manifests itself in joyful adeptness at smuggling goods across the border, but as a fac¬ tor creating dissension in marriage it must be viewed more seriously. Though Basil’s submission to Isabel’s will brings about a successful resolution to the only quarrel they have on their trip, we suspect that this will become his habitual strategy to achieve a delicate bal¬ ance in their marriage. His yielding is dramatized in a striking yet apparently inconsequential fantasy of Isabel’s: Shortly after the dispute, thoughts of the day’s experiences and the heroic legend of the founding of Montreal, which her husband has just recounted to her, become mingled in her mind with the details of the recent quarrel. In her reverie she is confessing to a pale, young priest, whom she had met earlier that day in a country church, when he turns into her husband. Basil is now clad as a medieval knight and carries an immense cross on his shoulder which he must plant on the summit above Montreal as Maisonneuve did in fulfillment of his vow. The quarrel still fresh in mind, she insists, in her vision, as she did in the real incident, on their having two horses to carry the cross to the top of the mountain. Basil’s submission to Isabel, against his better judgment, can be seen as the cross he must bear laboriously, almost religiously, in fulfillment of his marriage vow. But even for all this, Isabel looks back after twelve years of her supposedly “blissful” marriage (which had, in fact, occurred after a broken engagement and much anguish) and indulges in a “wicked reverie”: “Marriage was not the poetic dream of perfect union that a girl imagines it; she herself had found that out. It was 148 Marion W. Cumpiano a state of trial, of probation; it was an ordeal, not an ecstasy” (p. 199). The references to bloody events in American history provide darker hues to the canvas than the problems of marriage. To Isabel, a Bostonian, this history was either unknown or relegated to history books; to Basil, the massacres of the French and Indian at Schenec¬ tady were known so vividly in his boyhood “that he was scalped every night in his dreams, and woke up in the morning expecting to see marks of the tomahawk on the headboard” (p. 55). The grisly facts of the Deerfield Massacre, which Parkman de¬ tailed in its bloodcurdling horror, are revived as the travelers pass St, Regis where was “kindled the torch that wrapt [Deerfield] in flames, waking her people from their sleep to meet instant death or taste the bitterness of a captivity” (p. 115). Niagara has a historical background of execrable events: Abominable savages . . . leading a life of demoniacal misery and wick¬ edness . . . the ferocious Iriquois bloodily driving out these squalid devil- worshippers; the French planting the fort . , . and therewith the seeds of war that fruited afterwards in murderous strifes throughout the whole Niagara country; the struggle for the military posts on the river, during the wars of France and England; the awful scene in the conspiracy of Pontiac, where a detachment of English troops was driven by Indians over the precipice near the great Whirlpool . . . the savage forays with tomahawk and scalping-knife, and the blazing villages on either shore in the War of 1812: these are the memories of the place, the links in a chain of tragical interest scarcely broken before our time since the white man first beheld the mist-veiled face of Niagara, (pp. 88-89) That Canada, too, has had its share of wars and massacres is also recalled. “The red stain in Basil’s thought” (p. 149) is aroused by his visit to the battlefields, Parkman and guidebook in hand; the horrible tortures of the Jesuit missionaries by the Indians come to the minds of the wedding journeyers as they go looking for the skull of the martyred Father Brebeuf in Quebec. The terrible events of the more recent Civil War and the evils of Andersonville are brought back briefly to Basil’s memory by the presence of a South¬ ern gentleman. Though these grim memories of old evils are forgotten most of the time, the shocking conditions of the living city forcibly impinge themselves upon their sight. On their agonized day in New York Their Wedding Journey 149 City, the Marches can not escape its horror. Here, a busy industrialism has converted the city into a region of decaying neighborhoods and squalid streets inhabited by tragic-faced sleepwalkers. Howells re¬ serves his strongest language and most graphic details for the sharp vignettes which might have been drawn by Stephen Crane or later Naturalists; yet Reeves quotes from the original manuscript of Their Wedding Journey to show how Howells actually toned down or deleted some of the franker and harsher scenes as being too strong.^ One scene in particular which was eliminated provided noisome details of the flies swarming around the display in a meat market and settling in the stench. Reeves concludes: “The Upton Sinclair of The Jungle could hardly have improved on this.”® But not all the shocking details were deleted. The “frowzy serv¬ ing women” issuing from the cheap boardinghouses and decayed dwellings in the early morning and “the rows of ash-barrels, in which the decrepit children and mothers of the streets were clawing for bits of coal” (p. 17) present a dismal sight. The Battery scene, too, is exceptionally tragic and forlorn: A few scant and hungry-eyed little boys and girls were wandering over this weedy growth, not playing, but moving listlessly to and fro, fantastic in the wild inaptness of their costumes. One of these little creatures wore, with an odd involuntary jauntiness, the cast-off best dress of some hap¬ pier child, a gay little garment . . . which gave her the grotesque effect of having been at a party the night before. Presently came two jaded women, a mother and a grandmother, that appeared, when they had crawled out of their beds, to have put on only so much clothing as the law compelled. They abandoned themselves upon the green stuff . . . and, with their lean hands clasped outside their knees, sat and stared, silent and hopeless, at the eastern sky . . . while the child which the younger woman had brought with her feebly wailed unheeded at her side. On one side of these women were the shameless houses out of which they might have crept .... (pp. 20-21) ’’ “To be sure, the canceled passages in Their Wedding Journey did not contain any ‘palpitating divans’ . . . , but there are references to the female anatomy and some of its functions and to some less than ‘smiling aspects’ of American life, which if published might have made Howells’ contemporaries even more shocked and his later critics some¬ what less patronizing. Victorian delicacy seems to have motivated Howells’ deletion of a mother’s feeding her baby in the grubby scene at the Battery in New York. He originally wrote: ‘The child ... set up a puny whimper, and as she bared her yellow gauntness to give it suck, the spectacle was awfully revolting and touching’ ” (Reeves, p. 624). ® Ibid., p. 626. 150 Marion W. Cumpiano The shabbiness and meanness of the houses have degenerated along with their occupants, the physical and human spectacle alike appalling. In the business sections of the city the spectacle of cease¬ less labor at the expense of human life is described with a vehemence that anticipates scenes in A Hazard of New Fortunes, written when Howells had become a more fully-fledged social realist. A day in the blazing horror of New York’s teeming streets over¬ whelms the Marches, whose habitual absorption in each other or¬ dinarily allows them to contemplate the other dread scenes they encounter on their journey with greater equanimity or philosophical resignation. If the reader does not allow himself to see things only through their usual optimistic view, as so many readers have done in the past, and notices as well the details already enumerated, he discovers in Their Wedding Journey a far more somber world than has hitherto been suspected. But these details, disturbing as they may be as objective fact, are intensified and given even greater scope by Howells’s impressionistic art. II When the many literary devices of which Howells availed him¬ self in dealing with Niagara and the city of New York—powerful images, linked associations, phrases used with cumulative effect, hidden allusions, plays of fancy—are allowed to work upon the imagination of the reader, the intrinsic evils symbolized by these places loom portentous. The horrors of the large American city seem to dominate How¬ ells’s imagination, but this impression is probably due to the almost exclusive concentration of images of death and destruction in one early section of the book. Nevertheless, similar imagery and vocab¬ ulary are used to describe other scenes. Without taking into con¬ sideration this linking of imagery, one might come to the easy con¬ clusion that in the New York section Howells was directing himself mainly against the evils of the industrial system, which he denounced more vigorously in his later works. But, by the interweaving of this imagery with the other dark forces already mentioned in the pre¬ vious section—modern industrial conditions, natural dangers, basic primitive savagery, unconscious compulsions—the evils inherent in the modern city can be seen as part of the larger pattern of forces operating in namre and history. Their Wedding Journey 151 A mixture of the most potent images from the world’s storehouse of myth and literature combines to make the whole of the midsum¬ mer’s day experience in New York suggest universal scenes of dis¬ aster: it is a burning, barren waste land, parched by drought; a world gone mad “in its effect of universal lunacy” (p. 33); a mur¬ derous, savage place or primitive jungle; an inferno crowded with figures in everlasting torment; and a dying world coming to an end in a holocaust of fire, cinders, and ashes. All these terrors of man’s primal or ultimate chaos are invoked. The whole picture has the phantasmagoric quality of a nightmare; it is all too terrible to be grasped as reality. The baleful effect of a scorching June day brings to Basil and Isabel’s imagination all sorts of metropolitan evils: They said that the daily New York murder might even at that moment be somewhere taking place; and that no murder of the whole homicidal year could have such proper circumstance; they morbidly wondered what that day’s murder would be, and in what swarming tenement- house, or den of the assassin streets by the river-sides,—if indeed it did not befall in some such high, close-shuttered, handsome dwelling as those they passed, in whose twilight it would be easy to strike down the master and leave him undiscovered and unmourned by the family ig¬ norantly absent at the mountains or seaside. . . . They pictured . . . the grimy misery of stevodores unloading shiny cargoes of anthracite coal at city docks, (p. 31) Mock-tragic exaggeration plays over this and other of their fancies, for the honeymooners are but spectators in transit; the reader cannot help but be aware that to the permanent residents of the city these horrors are actual. The awful force of the heat seems to strip from the city’s in¬ habitants all semblance of human reason and sanity and reduce them to either madness, a primitive savage state, or the condition of beasts. The heat is worshipped by its victims as if it were a great and ter¬ rible god. At the ferryboat station each passenger before boarding the boat pauses at the thermometer hung there in a convenient place “as at a shrine, and mutely paid his devotions. At the altar of this fetish our friends also paused, and saw that the mercury was above ninety, and exulting with the pride that savages take in the cruel might of their idols, bowed their souls to the great god Heat” (pp. 152 Marion W. Cumpiano 27-28). Again, at the apothecary’s shop, where Basil and Isabel rest later in the day, each worshipper cries out the near 100 degree tem¬ perature “with a maniacal pride in the affliction laid upon man¬ kind” (p. 33). The bestial impression of the passengers thronging to escape the city by ferry is noted in a brief simile: they have been pent up behind iron bars “like a herd of wild animals” (p. 28). This City of Destruction is conceived of as undergoing the prophesied holocaust. As Isabel and Basil sit opposite each other in one of the crowded “phantasmal” cars, they have the feeling that the horror they have witnessed is like that which precedes the de¬ struction of the universe. “They bade each other a tacit farewell, and with patient, pathetic faces awaited the end of the world” (p. 31). Earlier, the hopeless plight of the city dwellers had been con¬ veyed by the image of those sad, silent women in the Battery who “sat and stared ... at the eastern sky, at the heart of the terrible furnace, into which in those days the world seemed cast to be burnt up” (p. 21). This vision of approaching doom is repeated when Basil and Isabel emerge upon Broadway, which “might well have seemed the last phase of a world presently to be destroyed” (p. 33). Images of a barren land of heat and drought are built up as “ ‘the day increased from heat to heat’ ” (p. 30). Basil and Isabel, wandering through it, become depressed as “the terrible spell of the great heat brooded upon them. All abroad burned the fierce white light of the sun, in which not only the earth seemed to parch and thirst but the very air withered, and was faint and thin to the troubled respiration” (p. 27). The tall gaunt buildings “let in the sun to bake the dust that the hot breaths of wind caught up and sent swirling into the shabby shops” (p. 30). Farther on, beyond the buildings, are “vacant lots full of granite boulders, clambered over by goats” (p. 30). Down by the forlorn Battery are the sickly locust trees which may possibly cast some “tremulous and decrepit shade upon the mangy grass plots” (p. 20), but the shade is of doubtful value. The open spaces between the paths are “thinly overgrown with some kind of refuse and opprobrious weed, a stunted and pauper vegetation proper solely to the New York Battery” (p. 20). In this sterile place, grotesque, hungry-looking children wander; lean and gaunt women sit “silent and hopeless.” Vacant, treeless lots which cast no shadow are avoided by Basil and Isabel “as if Their Wedding Journey 153 they had been difficult torrents or vast expanses of desert sand” (p. 30)- The waste-land imagery operates to connect Boston and New York. Though the nearby countryside and Boston itself are de¬ lineated swiftly, the few details given echo the imagery assigned to New York. The red rocks, the cicadas, and grasshoppers which brought no relief of rain to Eliot’s Waste Land dominate the land¬ scape outside the city: “The drouth and heat . . . brooded sovereign upon the tiresome landscape. The red granite rocks were as if red- hot; the banks of the deep cuts were like ash-heaps; . . . they fancied that they almost heard the grasshoppers sing above the rattle of the train” (p. 178). The city itself is equally barren; no flowers can grow here. The vine planted under their window hangs dry and shrivelled. The dust which covers everything also seems to foretell the desertlike, deadly future to which they have returned. Boston, though briefly sketched, by Howells’s indirect technique becomes suspect as potentially as terrible as New York. But it is not a place in transit, which Basil and Isabel can escape from; it is the home in which they are condemned to live and work. New York is limned even darker, as a hellish inferno where damned souls continuously circle. The ferry and train bring death¬ like crowds to the city; the faces of those who have come on long journeys from the broiling cities of the West are “dusty and ashen” (p. 27). The foul, tainted air, the burning sun, and dust and cinders fall upon “fantasmal” inhabitants. Their “deadly pallor” and “deep crimson” countenances (p. 28) reflect their ghastly condition. Four o’clock in the afternoon is “the deadliest hour of the deadly summer day. The spiritless air seemed to have a quality of blackness in it, as if filled with the gloom of low-hovering wings. ... [In this] livid atmosphere, and far up and down the length of the street swept a stream of tormented life” (p. 32). Vignettes of these souls in torment make vivid this hellish vision: One man, collarless, with waistcoat unbuttoned, and hat set far back from his forehead, waved a fan before his death-white flabby face, and set down one foot after the other with the heaviness of a somnambulist. Another . . . was saying huskily to the friend at his side, “I can’t stand this much longer. My hands tingle as if they had gone to sleep; my heart—.” (pp. 32-33) 154 Marion W. Cumpiano The wholesale business section of New York is a particularly painful circle of the Inferno. An awful spectacle is afforded of the torture of labor placed upon the backs of all men and beasts engaged there, of “the man carrying the hod to the top of the walls that rankly grow and grow as from his life’s blood . . . [of] the plethoric millionaire for whom he toils [plotting and planning] in his ofl&ce till he swoons at the desk; [of] the trembling beast [staggering] forward while the flame-faced tormentor on the box has strength to lash him on . . (p. 29). These labors are as endless and eternal as those in Dante’s hell and as repetitious and unfinished as those in a bad dream. For these damned souls there is no logic nor purpose in their toil. The fer¬ ment of the city’s business accomplishes nothing. In the large stores, those “vast palaces of commerce there are ceaseless sale and pur¬ chase, packing and unpacking, lifting up and laying down, arriving and departing loads; in thousands of shops is the unspared and im- sparing weariness of selling; in the street, filled by the hurry and suffering of tens of thousands, is the weariness of buying” (pp. 29- 30). In many places there is “eternal building up and pulling down” (p. 18). Forces of “demolition and construction” (pp. 18, 30) reveal gaping cellars, piles of rubbish, and the ugly insides of half-demolished houses. Even the “eternal” handsome, brownstone houses on “endless blocks” have an “intolerable uniformity,” which depresses Basil and Isabel “like a procession of houses trying to pass a given point and never getting by” (p. 31). This treadmill idea of perpetual motion to no end is emphasized by the constant movement of Basil and Isabel through the squalid streets and wide avenues “with processions of cars like their own coming and going up and down the centre of a foolish and useless breadth . . .” (p. 30). The “demoniac” quality of the “fiendish” trains recalls the hell- fire imagery of the city. A trip on the train to Niagara with a dia¬ bolic conductor abandoned to the “blackest of arts” of making time is like a passage to the underworld. Cinders are in the air and on the seats and crackle underfoot; dust covers everything. The pas¬ sengers are “grinning wretches,” whose smiles have a “fiendish effect” (p. 72). The trains coming in to New York are equally dreadful. The clatter of their rails is like a “demoniac yell” (p. 27), and the atmosphere of the station is “close and dead and mixed with Their Wedding Journey 155 the carbonic breath of the locomotives” (p. 27). The coal-smoked roof generates “a heat deadlier than that poured upon it from the skies” (p. 27). Niagara imagery ties together these deadly or diabolic aspects of the modern age with human life. Nature-city relationships are made by the references to inhabitants of the city in terms of tides, waves, and rapids. The waking throngs crowding into the busy city are described, for example, as a “deep tide of life [swelling] back from its night-long ebb” (p. 22), phrases picked up from a poem quoted by Basil earlier referring to them as the “tide of life” and “human waves” (p. 16). The connection between Niagara and human life is most explicit: “The Niagara roar [of the swarming city] swelled and swelled from those human rapids” (p. 19). The devil’s power reigning in the city and over the rails® is displayed at Niagara, too, where each billow of the rapids leaps up “as if possessed by a separate demon” (p. 92). The “hell broth” of Burning Spring boils as if from a hellish cauldron: “As each bubble breaks upon the troubled surface, and yields its flash of infernal flame and its whiff of sulphurous stench, it seems hardly strange that the Neutral Nation should have revered the cataract as a demon . . .” (p. 96; italics mine). The savagery of the devil-worshippers around Niagara, already referred to, who revered “the cataract as a kind of august devil” (p. 88) and led a “demoniacal” life, was as barbaric as that of the tribes that spread terror in the northern United States and Canada. It is left for the readers of this book to supply for themselves the link which associates the “savage rites” of the inhabitants of New York City to the deeds of those earlier savages.^® Niagara, itself, is most vividly conceived as a destroyer of men. Its history has a deep “stain of crimson” (p. 88), which ties up with the “bloody stain” in Basil’s thoughts on recalling Canadian battles. In the Whirlpool its secret, diabolical power is especially felt. That swirling maelstrom catches whatever it can in its toils, with a “sad “ Suspension bridges are also in the power of the devil, for they were “built by the Devil, in times when the Devil did not call himself a civil engineer” {TWJ, p. i6i). The evil nature of the city is, likewise, by the repetition of a word allied to the horrors of warfare. The phrase “hideous vistas of carnage” (TWf, p. 30), referring to a sight Basil and Isabel see in a New York meat market, suddenly reverberates on the reader’s memory when they visit the historic battlefield of the Plains of Abraham and the words “loathsome carnage” are used. Thus by a gesture Howells connects the idea of wholesale bloodshed of past battles to the equally murderous city. 156 Marion W. Cumpiano maniacal patience” (p, loi). “The bodies of drowned men carried into the whirlpool . . . enact upon its dizzy surges a travesty of life” (p. loi), and seem like the throes of those laboring men caught in the insane whirlpool of the city. The poem “Avery,” which has haunted Basil’s memory, pur¬ porting to be the true history of a victim caught in the rapids, sums up with melodramatic heroics the awful power of Niagara. The doomed man’s cries, “Out of the hell of the rapids as ’twere a lost soul’s cries” (p. 86) are to no avail. Those in a place of safety watch him helplessly as he is finally “Caught in the long-baffled clutch of the rapids, and rolled and hurled / Headlong on to the cataract’s brink, and out of this world” (p. 88). Tumultuous natural violence is also connected with the human condition. Even in the marriage of the protagonists, where there is deep, genuinely felt love, the ordeal ahead is foreshadowed by the storm which coincides with their setting out on their wedding journey. The opening scene, described in terms of human passion and anguish, may also be read as an objective correlative for the powerfully destructive emotional effects of marital discord: It went on from passion to passion with inexhaustible violence .... the trees whitened in the gusts, and darkened in the driving floods of the rainfall, and in some paroxysms of the tempest bent themselves in des¬ perate submission, and then with a great shudder rent away whole branches and flung them far off upon the ground, (pp. 4-5; italics mine) Niagara, the malevolent power that catches the fated innocent in its toils, is associated, appropriately, with marriage. And, also, appropriately, Isabel makes the identification. Possessed by its vio¬ lence, she cries out mock-seriously, “I’m most unhappily married to Niagara” (p. 103). The perils and terrors of nature and primitive savagery and the evils of modern life and marriage are subsumed in this gigantic symbol of Niagara. It holds within itself the sum of the dark forces of the universe. Thus, on this journey to Niagara is enacted the experience of fortunate Americans who come close enough to the brink of the Whirlpool to shudder at its horrors; but by grace of their innocence and romantic imagination are enable to enjoy the sunlight playing on the scene. William Dean Howells, George William Curtis, and the "Haymarket Affair” Clara and Rudolf Kirk ■p VERETT Carter, in Howells and the Age of Reason (1950), de- ^ votes several pages to “The Haymarket Affair.”^ Howells’s “horizons,” Carter reminds us, were “widened” by his courageous but unavailing attempt to save the lives of four anarchists associated with the Haymarket Riot of May 4, 1886.^ In his brief but informa¬ tive account of Howells’s part in the events which led to the execu¬ tion of these men on November ii, 1887, Carter admits that, in spite of all the data accumulated on the subject of the novelist’s stand in defense of the accused men, “the exact occasion of the transforma¬ tion of Howells from conservative to radical, the exact moment of his sudden anguish cannot be determined.” He adds that Howells said it came “ ‘through reading their trial’ and that “this reading necessarily was at some time between the summer of 1886 and the summer of 1887.” We believe that two pamphlets Howells read at this time and forwarded to his friend, George William Curtis, provide the ex¬ planation of his “transformation.” They were August Spies’ Auto¬ biography, His Speech in Court, and General Notes, by Nina 'Van Zandt,^ and A Concise History of the Great Trial of the Chicago Anarchists in 1886, Condensed from the Official Record, by Dyer D. Lum.^ Howells sent these brochures to Curtis, then editor of Har- ^ Pp. 179-185. See also Everett Carter, “William Dean Howells’ Theory of Critical Realism,” Journal of English Literary History, XVI, 151-166 (June, 1949). “Howells wrote to Hamlin Garland, January 15, 1888, “You’ll easily believe that I did not bring myself to the point of openly befriending those men who were civically mur¬ dered in Chicago for their opinions without thinking and feeling much, and my horizons have been indefinitely widened by the process” {Lije in Letters of William Dean Howells, ed. Mildred Howells, New York, 1928, I, 407-408). “Published by Nina Van Zandt, Chicago, [no date]. The Preface is dated January 27, 1887. The New York Times of February 4, 1887, carried the following notice: “Chicago, Feb. 3. Miss Van Zandt’s book on August Spies is out to-day.” 27 lines of quotation follow. A copy of the pamphlet is in the Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois. * Published by the Socialistic Publishing Society, Chicago. A Condensed History is undated. It carries on the back cover an advertisement of the pamphlet by Nina Van 158 Clara and Rudolf Kirk per’s Weekly and responsible for the political editorials appearing in that publication/ in the hope that the light thrown on the trial of the Chicago Anarchists by these two writers might influence Curtis, widely known for his liberal views, to use his editorial power in favor of the Anarchists. Before turning to a consideration of these pamphlets and the letters concerning them, it is necessary to recall the events of the previous year.® From his home in Boston, Howells had followed the trial of the eight accused men who had been put on the stand in the Cook County Criminal Court on June 21, 1886, for the murder of a policeman, Mathias J. Degan, during the Haymarket riot of May 4. As the weeks dragged on, he became convinced that the whole procedure was “hysterical and unjust.” The trial ended on August 20, 1886, with the verdict of guilty. The following October, Judge Joseph E. Gary denied a plea for a new trial made by one of the lawyers for the defense. Captain William Perkins Black, and sentenced seven of the eight men to be hanged on December 3 of that year.^ Black immediately carried his plea to the Illinois Su¬ preme Court, and on November 25, 1886, the Court granted a stay of execution, pending a decision on the appeal. Black was one of the several lawyers who addressed the Illinois Supreme Court on March 13-17, 1887, in support of the appeal for a new trial. Several months later, Howells wrote to Curtis to express the hope that something might yet be done to avert the mistake of making martyrs of the accused. He had “within a few weeks,” he wrote, read Nina Van Zandt’s Auto-Biography of Spies, which had rein¬ forced his belief that the trial had not been fair. Miss Van Zandt, a young woman, had attended the trial of the Anarchists, and, to the surprise of family and friends, had married Spies, by proxy, in the course of the trial. The marriage was never consummated, but Zandt. A copy is in the Newberry Library. At the time of the Haymarket Riot, Lum was a journalist in Chicago and active in the radical movement. “Curtis was editor of Harper’s Weehjy from 1863 to his death in 1892. He assumed the position of editorial writer from the beginning of his editorship of the Weekly (Gor¬ don Milne, George William Curtis and the Genteel Tradition, Bloomington, Ind., 1956, p. 69). ® Many of the original documents, together with a running account of the trial, are to be found in The Chicago Haymar\et Riot: Anarchy on Trial. Selected Source Material for College Research Papers, ed. Bernard R. Kogan (Boston, 1959). ’'See Judge Gary’s article, “The Chicago Anarchists of 1886: The Crime, The Trial, and The Punishment, By the Judge Who Presided at the Trial,” Century Magazine, XLV, 803-837 (April, 1893). Howells and the “Haymarket Affair” 159 Miss Van Zandt, in her effort to save her husband, had written an emotional account of the sessions she had attended.^ Howells mailed her pamphlet to Curtis, whom he addressed as “an ardent anti¬ slavery man.” Curtis at once replied that the “violent strain” of Miss Van Zandt’s plea left him unconvinced. Howells’s letter of August 10, 1887, and Curtis’s reply of August 12,® follow: Lake George, Aug. 10, 1887. Dear Mr. Curtis— When I saw you last winter, we spoke in sympathy about the im¬ policy of hanging the Chicago “Anarchists.” Within a few weeks I have read Miss Van Zandt’s resume of their trial, which I suppose represents the facts, & I feel more than ever than [riV] that it was not a fair trial, either as to the selection of the jury or the rulings of the judge. The evidence showed that neither Parsons nor Spies was concerned in pro¬ moting riot or disorder, and their speeches show them to have been ac¬ tive friends of a peaceful solution of the labor troubles. They are con¬ demned to death upon a principle that would have sent every ardent antislavery man to the gallows. I do not know whether the decision of the Illinois supreme court is final or not, but if there is still any chance for those men, cannot some¬ thing be done to bring the public to a better mind about them, and to save the American people from allowing an injustice to be done in their name Yours sincerely, W. D. Howells. Curtis replied at once: Ashfield Mass. August i2th. 1887. My dear Mr. Howells I have your note of the loth and I have read carefully the enclosure. It is in the violent strain that characterizes everything that is said upon the subject. But I have not read the evidence at the trial nor the argu- ® Charles Edward Russell, “The Haymarket and Afterwards, Some Personal Recollec¬ tions,” Appleton’s Magazine, X, 399-412 (Sept., 1907). ° These two letters are in the Houghton Library, Harvard. They are published with the permission of the Houghton Library and of Professor W. W. Howells, and may not be reprinted without their written consent. Similar permission has been granted for the reproduction of the other letters quoted in this article. We wish to thank Professor George Arms, of the University of New Mexico, for directing our attention to several letters ex¬ changed between Howells and Curtis, which are in the Howells Collection, Harvard. We wish also to thank the Newberry Library of Chicago for the many courtesies extended to us in the course of this study. i6o Clara and Rudolf Kirk ments before the Supreme Court and I, therefore, am not in a position to speak fairly. To question a double judgment in the case would require a strong conviction that the Judges had yielded to angry clamor. My impression at the time when I spoke with you at Norton’s was that the excitement of feeling in Chicago made the fairness of the trial doubtful, although, as I say, I had not followed it so closely as to have a decided opinion. You have evidently mastered the facts. Now your name would give great weight to any statement or plea proceeding evidently not from emotion, but from conviction. Why should not you write such a state¬ ment and let us all consider whether it would be well to print it in the Weekly? It would have to be very conclusive, undoubtedly, to strike our friends in Franklin Square favorably. But surely if your feeling be justified, and that certainly seems to me not improbable, some kind of effort should be made to prevent a tragedy. I wish you were here. Very truly yours, George William Curtis. After Howells had sent Miss Van Zandt’s pamphlet to Curtis, he received, “from some unknown person,” Dyer D. hum’s Concise History of the Great Trial of the Chicago Anarchists in 1886}^ This more authoritative history of the trial Howells hastened to send to Curtis. Here was evidence enough, he thought, “to strike our friends in Franklin Square favorably.” Postponing for a while die letter Curtis had suggested that Howells might write for the Weekly, Howells mailed the pamphlet to Curtis, on August 18, 1887, with the following letter Dear Mr. Curtis— Of course I feel the force of what you say, and that a man strange to the rules of law should have the ground sure under his feet before he questions the decision of two courts of law. In my own case you are mistaken as to a “mastery” of the facts. I have had my original feeling that the trial of the anarchists was hysterical and unjust strengthened by reading a condensed history of it, based upon the original record, and. Several paragraphs from Black’s speech are quoted in Lum’s Concise History, thus indicating that the undated pamphlet appeared sometime between the delivery of the speech in March, 1887, and the day the appeal was denied, August 20, 1887. Manuscript Room, Washington University Library, St. Louis, Mo. We are indebted to Mrs. Elsie T. Freeman, who found this letter in a copy of T. B. Aldrich’s Ballad of Bahie Bell, 1859, and sent us a reproduction. Published by permission of the Library and of Professor W. W. Howells. Howells and the “Haymarket Affair” i6i though printed for the condemned, apparently not garbled or distorted; that is all. This history came to me from some unknown person, and necessarily without knowledge of my feeling on the part of the sender. I now send it to you, and beg you to give an hour or two up to it. I have marked passages to facilitate your reading, and I know you will not think it lost time. Look how the case was worked up beforehand by the press and the police; how the jury was empaneled regardless of the acknowledged prejudices of eight or nine of the jurors; how partial the court’s rulings seem to be; how inflammatory the prosecuting attorney’s appeals; how purely circumstantial and conjectural the evidence, and how distinctly and squarely met; how that “reasonable doubt” which should have been made to favor the accused was tormented throughout into proof against them. I feel that these men are doomed to suffer for their opinion’s sake; but as my whole life has been given to the study of different questions, I distrust my ability to judge the situation dispassionately. If, on looking at the facts yoti tell me I am wrong, I will know that it is hopeless to attempt anything in behalf of those friendless prisoners. Of course, there is the larger mercy which considers the welfare of the community, and I am not unmindful of that, as, I am sure you will not be. But I have spoken with several lawyers about the case, and their belief was that the trial was for socialism and not for murder; that it was necessarily partial.^^ I need not say anything to arouse your sympathy in behalf of men who seem to have been persecuted rather than prosecuted, and I will spare you any superfluous rhetoric. But I will own that this case has taken a deep hold of me, and that I feel strongly the calamity which error in it must embody. Civilization cannot afford to give martyrs to a bad cause; and if the cause of these men is good, what an awful mistake to put them to death! Perhaps you will let Norton^' look at the pamphlet too. I will then be glad to have it back. Yours sincerely, W. D. How ells. A brief paragraph at the end of the pamphlet, “Why This Book Was Written,tells the reader that Lum had been asked by the accused men to undertake an official report of “our late trial.” Charles Eliot Norton, Professor of Art at Harvard and a friend of both How'ells and Curtis. ** P. 192. Their request was signed by the eight men who had been tried. Their names appeared as follows: A. Spies, Michael Schwab, .■\dolph Fischer, G. Engel, A. R. Parsons, Samuel Fielden, O. Neebe, Louis Lingg. Their request was written from the Cook County Jail, Chicago. Clara and Rudolf Kirk 162 The summary of the contents given by Howells in his letter to Curtis parallels that of hum’s pamphlet point by point. “How the case was worked up beforehand by the press and the police,” which Howells invites Curtis to consider, is enlarged upon in the third chapter of the pamphlet, “The Haymarket Speech.” Chapter iv, entitled “The Empanelling of the Jury,” and Chapter v, “The Jury in the Case,” are referred to by Howells when he urges Curtis to notice “how the jury was empanelled regardless of the acknowl¬ edged prejudices of eight or nine of the jurors.” The next two chapters, which Howells referred to when he noted “how inflam¬ matory the prosecuting attorney’s appeals,” are entitled “Evidence for the Prosecution.” The remaining chapters (vii-xii), summa¬ rizing the “Argument for the Defense,” and the review of the case proved to Howells “how purely circumstantial and conjectural the evidence, and how distinctly and squarely met”; how “reasonable doubt” was “tormented throughout into proof against them.” Here, at last, was a factual account of the case clearly and objectively set forth from the oflEcial records. Howells’s feeling that a great in¬ justice was being perpetrated against innocent men by those who feared social revolution was confirmed. A Concise History provided the hope that Curtis might, through Harper s Weekly, influence public opinion before the Illinois Supreme Court verdict should be finally handed down, or at least before Judge Gary should pass sen¬ tence. Curtis, however, had already committed Harper’s Weekly against the Anarchists, as a review of the case will show. In the May 15, 1886, issue. Harper s Weekly had expressed its views, editorially and pictorially, in a two-page drawing, ostensibly based on photographs and sketches of the Riot made on the scene, and in a news report which “matched in its inaccuracy” the double¬ page sketch.^^ In the same number of the Weekly appeared an edi¬ torial, “The Chicago Police and Anarchists,” praising the “heroic fidelity and bravery of the police of Chicago in the late street battle with brutal rufl&ans, all of whom seem to have been foreigners.” This statement echoed in milder terms the verdict rendered in the news report^® that the “circumstantial evidence” discovered in the rooms of the accused men was “sufficient to cause the conviction of XXX, 312-313, 315. Drawing by T. de Thulstrup from sketches and photographs by H. Jeanneret. See Henry David, The History of the Haymar\et Affair (New York, 1936), p. 214. “Anarchists Riots in the West,” p. 315. Howells and the “Haymarket Affair” 163 all these notorious leaders.” A cartoon by Thomas Nast of “Those Foreign Savages” in the Weekly of July 24, 1886, showing Anar¬ chists shooting the American flag, supported the editorial view of the case. As the trial proceeded, through the summer of 1886, read¬ ers’ interest was sustained by a half-column account of the choosing of the jury and the hearing of the first witnesses.^® After the ver¬ dict against the accused was handed down on August 20, 1886, the Weekly greeted the news with a full-page cartoon, by Thomas Nast, depicting seven Anarchists being crushed in a huge fist, wear¬ ing a ring labeled “Union,” which clutched also a sword labeled “U. S.” Lest the readers of the Weekly forget what the editorial views concerning the trial were, a small but eloquent cartoon, also by Nast, appeared in the issue of September 4, 1886. It depicted a wood¬ en scaffold, labeled “The Law,” from which dangled seven looped ropes. Under the sketch were the words, “Equal to the Anarchists,” with the sub-caption, “They will have all the rope they want, and more too.” The Weekly had thus announced, by cartoons, news articles, and editorials, that it considered just the verdict of the Cook County Criminal Court. The election of a Republican mayor of Chicago, in the spring of 1887, was attributed, to the defection of the vote from the labor candidate because of the widespread fear of the Anarchists. A half¬ page cartoon by W. A. Rogers of four respectable citizens tossing a knife-brandishing Anarchist in a blanket labeled “The Red Flag of Anarchy” brings the point home to the reader. The cartoon is captioned, “The Chicago Idea: Tossing the Anarchist in His Own Blanket—the Red Flag—” (April 16, 1887). When he addressed his letter of August 18, 1887, to Curtis, Howells knew the view of the Anarchist trial held by the Weekly. He himself had joined the Harper staff on January i, 1886, as oc¬ cupant of the “Editor’s Study.” But for many years before his re¬ moval to New York, Howells had associated with Curtis and their mutual friend, Charles Eliot Norton, during summer sessions at Ashfield, Massachusetts, where liberal ideas were freely discussed. Howells had hopes that the “facts” of the case presented by A Con¬ cise History of the Great Tried might alter the attitude of Curtis. Curtis received Howells’s letter and the pamphlet just at the mo- “The Anarchists’ Trial,” July 31, 1886, p. 494. 164 Clara and Rudolf Kirk ment when the summer gathering at Ashfield was preparing for the annual dinner. He wrote apologetically Ashfield Mass. September ist. 1887. My dear Howells. Your note and pamphlet came just as we were getting into the thick of the dinner. Our house has been overflowing, and I have been as much of a truant from my correspondence as possible. I see that the Supreme Court of Illinois will decide on Tuesday [Wednesday, September 14], and that if the opinion be unfavorable the question will be appealed. But I don’t know to what tribunal. I have had but little chance to read the pamphlet although I have made some progress. It is an exparte statement of course and an un¬ biased opinion I suppose would require the official record. Still the ex¬ tracts from it here respecting the jury are remarkable and I hope to have read the whole soon. The dinner was very pleasant .... Good bye, always yours, George William Curtis. Howells’s suggestion that Curtis might use his influence in favor of the appeal, still pending, proved futile. After Curtis had taken time to read carefully what he referred to as “their own pamphlet,” he was even more convinced of the guilt of the Anarchists. On Sep¬ tember 14, the Illinois Supreme Court rejected the appeal for a retrial. Evidently Howells wrote again to Curtis asking him to in¬ tercede with Governor Oglesby of Illinois,^® for on September 23, 1887, Curtis replied: My dear Howells, I wish with all my heart that I could do what you wish. But while I hate capital punishment, and should gladly see whatever mercy the Governor might show, I cannot help feeling, and more strongly upon the showing of their own pamphlet, which I read carefully and have handed to Norton, that the men are morally responsible for the crime. With this feeling, and with the conviction that the Judges have carefully weighed the whole case upon their responsibility and much more intelli- This letter and the four that follow (September 23, 25, 26, 27, 1887) are in the Houghton Library, Harvard. Such a letter from Howells to Curtis has not been found. Howells and the “Haymarket Affair” 165 gently than I could weigh it, I do not think that I should be justified in attempting to interfere, except upon a strong & clear persuasion that the Anarchists have been wrongfully condemned. But this I do not feel. They are not condemned for their opinions, but for deliberately inciting, without any pretence of reason, to a horrible crime which was committed with disastrous results. I will not argue the matter. I meant only to tell you how sincerely sorry I am not to be able to do what you think ought to be done, and how sincerely I respect your deep feeling upon the subject. Most truly yours, George William Curtis. Before Curtis’s letter reached him, however, Howells wrote a hasty note to the Editor of the Weekly, enclosing a letter written by himself, as Curtis had suggested in his letter of August 12. He hoped Curtis would either publish it or return it to him immedi¬ ately. The letter was mailed from Dansville, New York, where Howells’s invalid daughter had passed “a wretched summer.” “My dear Mr. Curtis,” Howells wrote on September 25, 1887: I think you might print the enclosed letter without harming any one, and perhaps get a text from it for a few words of your own in behalf of those friendless men. If you must reject it, I beg you to return it to me immediately. . . . By the following day, Howells had received Curtis’s letter of September 23; he realized at last that no help was to come through the Weekly. In a discouraged mood, he asked again that his letter be returned: Dear Mr. Curtis— Dansville, Sept. 26, 1887. I thank you for your kind letter,—nothing could be kinder,—and I will thank you to send back the letter which I yesterday submitted to you for publication. If others like you feel as you do, it can’t help the condemned men, and its spirit might only exasperate the public mind against them more and more. Of course I am disappointed, for I hoped that you could see the mat¬ ter as I do, and I will own that I cannot see it differently. But now I think I shall make no public expression because it would be futile. Yours sincerely, W. D. Howells. Clara and Rudolf Kirk 166 The letter of September 25, with the enclosure, reached Curtis on September 27. At the same time Curtis received a telegram from Howells repeating his request that the letter be returned. Thinking that Howells was referring to the pamphlet rather than to the letter, Curtis returned the “history” with the following letter: Ashfield Mass. September 27th. 1887. My dear Howells. Your telegram came this morning and your letter with the enclosure this evening, which will explain my supposition that your telegram al¬ luded to the pamphlet which I send by this mail. Your letter for Harper shows strong feeling of which I need no proof, and although your view of the case is not mine, I should very willingly publish your letter without comment, but I do not know how the Har¬ pers might feel. But I do not understand that it is decided to be possible to carry the case to the Supreme Court. While I do not doubt that your name would give great weight to your plea for a pause, I think that the tone of the letter would tend to defeat its purpose. Yet I do not wonder that with your conviction you are impatient of what seems to you a terrible wrong and that in writing you speak with bitter sarcasm. . . . The lead editorial in Harper’s Wee\ly, October i, 1887, com¬ menting on the rejection of the appeal by the Illinois Supreme Court on September 14, 1887, observed that the decision was re¬ ceived by the press “with universal approval, . . . there can be no doubt that public opinion is satisfied.”^® Curtis’s rejection of How- ells’s pleas was consistent with the sustained editorial policy of Har¬ per’s Weekly. Howells then consulted the leading counsel for the Anarchists, General Roger A. Pryor,^° who had taken the case to the United States Supreme Court. Pryor agreed that Howells would do well to suppress the publication of his letter until after the decision of the Supreme Court. When, on November 2, Pryor and his associates learned that they had failed to convince this Court that a retrial should be ordered, Howells sent his famous letter of Novem^r 4, “The Anarchists at Chicago,” p. 702. The letters exchanged between Howells and Pryor are reprinted in Life in Letters, I, 393-398. Pryor and his colleagues presented their appeal to the United States Supreme Court on October 21, 27, 28, 1887. Howells and the “Haymarket Affair” 167 1887, to the New York Tribune urging his readers to petition Gov¬ ernor Oglesby of Illinois to commute the sentence.^^ By thus departing from the view of the Anarchists’ trial held by Curtis and Harper’s Weekly, Howells, a new member of the staff of the Monthly, jeopardized his own professional standing. Accord¬ ing to his daughter, he “felt so strongly that the ‘Chicago Anarchists’ had not been fairly tried that he risked, as he believed, his reputa¬ tion and his livelihood in trying to save them.”^^ However, four of the men were hanged on November ii, 1887; Howells’s “un¬ availing word for the Anarchists’’^^ had been spoken without the support of Curtis and Harper’s Weekly. A long and eloquent letter, written the next day and addressed to the Tribune, stating his bitter grief at this miscarriage of justice, was left among Howells’s pa- pers.^^ The letter is entitled “A Word for the Dead”; here Howells says again that these men died for their political views and not for murder. Though written with more emotional vehemence than the letter sent to Curtis on August 18, 1887, Howells follows the same line of argument, as set forth in Turn’s Concise History, and points to the packed jury, the bloody garments brought into the court, the speeches of State’s Attorney Grinnell and Judge Gary. Perhaps because the case was ended, perhaps because Howells did not wish to endanger his professional position further, he did not send the letter.^® Under the title “The Hanging of the Chicago Anarchists,” the whole history of the case was reviewed in Harper’s Weekly on No¬ vember 19, 1887. This factual account of the hanging of four of the Anarchists^® was fully illustrated by unsigned drawings of August Spies in his cell, the death corridor, and the exterior of the Chi¬ cago jail where they were lodged. Editorial comment appeared in Howells’s letter of November 4 was published in the New York Tribune of November 6, 1887. It was reprinted in the Chicago Inter Ocean, November 10, 1887, p. 3. The letter is included in Life in Letters, I, 398-399. (The date given here for the ap¬ pearance of the letter in the Tribune is incorrectly stated as November 4.) ** Life in Letters, I, 393. Ibid., I, 402. For Howells’s letter on the subject to Francis F. Brown, published in the Chicago Tribune, November 8, 1887, see John W. Ward, “Another Howells Anarchist Letter,” American Literature, XXII, 489-490 (Jan., 1951). ** Houghton Library, Harvard. This letter is reproduced by Edwin H. Cady in The Realist at War (Syracuse, N. Y., 1958), pp. 73-77. Howells reviewed the attitude of Harper and Brothers toward his defense of the Anarchists in “Mr. Howells’s Paper,” written at the request of J. H. Harper, included in The House of Harper (New York, 1912). One man, Louis Lingg, committed suicide in his cell; three received prison terms. Clara and Rudolf Kirk 168 the November 26 issue of the Weekly. The writer, presumably Cur¬ tis, here considered “The Lesson of Chicago,” which was that law and order must be maintained when revolution threatens. Not until Governor John P. Altgeld, in June, 1893, granted an absolute pardon to the three Anarchists who had been imprisoned did public opinion begin to accept the view, which Howells had steadily maintained, that four men were executed not for a crime but for their political opinions. As Dyer D. Lum had written in his pamphlet, “the defendants were condemned less for the murder of Degan than because they were Anarchists, because they held theo¬ retical views at variance with those in general acceptance—in short, because they were social hereticsT^^ Six years after the trial, the analysis of the case presented by Lum in his Concise History ap¬ peared correct. It is probable that Lum’s pamphlet was an important contribution to Howells’s “reading” which brought about his “trans¬ formation” between the summer of 1886 and the summer of 1887. ”p. 174. Savagery and Civilization: The Moral Dimensions of Howells’s A Boy’s Town Tom H. Towers A Boy’s Town (1890) is generally acknowledged to be the most artistically successful of Howells’s several volumes of memoirs. Critics have called it “one of his best books,” his “most poetic” work, even a non-fiction rival of Huckleberry Finn} At the same time there has been no considerable study of the book except as a source of biographical information or, along with the correspond¬ ing sections of Years of My Youth (1916), as evidence of the West¬ ern origins of Howells’s democratic idealism.^ The biographical importance of A Boy’s Town is obvious. And there is also much in the memoir to support a “democratic” reading. The most familiar passage in the book describes the perfect class¬ lessness of Hamilton, Ohio: it was a village in which “everybody had enough, but nobody had too much” (p. 78).^ There is no sense here, as there is everywhere in the mature novels, of any compelling economic need or economic inequity. What desires are not imme¬ diately satisfied by nature can be easily fulfilled by honest labor honestly rewarded. The town thrives on community projects such as the canal, which, Howells says, “made [the people] brothers and equals, as private property never does” (p. 50). ^ See, respectively, Van Wyck Brooks, Howells, His Life and World (New York, 1959), p. 4; Oscar W. Firkins, William Dean Howells: A Study (Cambridge, Mass., 1924), p. 26; Edwin H. Cady, The Road to Realism: The Early Years, 1837-188$, of William Dean Howells (Syracuse, N. Y., 1956), p. 12. * Cady, pp. 22-24, and George C. Carrington, Jr., The Immense Complex Drama: The World and Art of the Howells Novel (Columbus, Ohio, 1966), pp. 29-31, point out the psychological significance of a number of the incidents recounted in A Boy’s Town, but say little, except as noted above, about the literary aspect of the book. For representative statements about the democratic influences at work on Howells in his early years, see Olov W. Fryckstedt, In Search of America: A Study of Howells’ Early Development as a Novelist (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), pp. 13-15; Robert L. Hough, The Quiet Rebel: William Dean Howells as Social Commentator (Lincoln, 1959), pp. 5-9; B. A. Sokoloff, “William Dean Howells and the Ohio Village: A Study in Environment and Art,” American Quar¬ terly, XI, 58-75 (1959)- “William Dean Howells, A Boy’s Town (New York, 1890). All subsequent quotations are from this edition; page references appear in parentheses. Tom H. Towers 170 As democracy is the rule of public life, joy seems to govern in¬ dividual lives. The boys, and to a lesser extent their parents, live close to nature and are constantly renewed by that contact. There are swimming and skating for the children; gardening, fishing, and hunting for the adults. Nature and the town itself combine to teach the lessons of equality and love. If we continue to regard the book as a guide to frontier democ¬ racy, we are likely to see the removal of the Howells family from Hamilton as constituting a kind of symbolic death for the young Howells, “my boy” as he is called throughout the book. Soon after he leaves Hamilton “my boy” is struck down by cholera and nearly dies. When he recovers he finds he has been reborn into a new and alien world. He tries to return to the boy’s town for a holiday, but he is a stranger who can never recover the joyful innocence of the village Eden (pp. 243-245). From now on Hamilton can be re¬ membered but not recaptured; for the mature Howells it will be an example of what human society might have been, and it will provide the basis for Howells’s vision of Altruria. I Attractive as such an understanding of Howells’s youth might be, it fails, I think, to account satisfactorily for either the content or the structure of A Boy's Toum. By concentrating so exclusively on the outward life of the boy and his family, such a view invests “my boy’s” youthful judgments with too much authority, and in the same way almost completely disregards the inward life of the boy, which is the subject of the most serious and most disturbing parts of the work. There are numerous indications in the book that “my boy” is an unreliable witness to the life around him. Many of the scenes he sees as joyful appear so only because he cannot look beyond the moment, because he lacks moral sympathy or imagination. The town itself, for example, is scarcely the home- spun Arcadia it seems to “my boy.” The woods where the boys forage for nuts is the “poor-house woods.” The fishermen the boys idolize are the rejected castoffs of rural society, the drunkards and the unemployed. The boys’ games are played under the windows of the Hamilton jail (p. 216). There is a “Negro quarter” with all that that term has always implied, and indeed the young Howells Moral Dimensions in A Boy’s Town 171 is very nearly party to a lynching (pp. 129-130). There are the village idiot and the village pariah.^ “My boy” can scarcely perceive and certainly cannot understand the more sordid aspects of his experience. He seems surrounded by pleasure—or at least the absence of responsibility—and the lives of others in a very real sense simply do not exist for him. Through¬ out the book Howells calls this failure of the moral imagination “savagery,” and he repeatedly refers to the boys as “savages.” The savage boy cannot explain the evil that impinges upon his own life, but from time to time he becomes inarticulately conscious of it. One of Howells’s earliest memories is that of a one-legged man drowning in the Ohio River. A passenger on a river steamer, young Howells is kneeling at the window of the ladies’ cabin—presumably a haven from the harshness of the world—“watching the rain fall into the swirling yellow river and make the little men jump up from the water with its pelting drops.” The boat stops to take on a passenger, the one-legged man, who has been rowed out from shore. “When the yawl comes alongside he tries to step aboard the steamboat, but he misses his footing and slips into the yellow river, and vanishes softly. It is all so smooth and easy, and it is as curious as the little men jumping up from the rain-drops. ... His drowning had exactly the value in the child’s mind that the jumping up of the little men had, neither more nor less” (pp. 8-9). As the book progresses, “my boy” becomes increasingly aware of such disturbances in his ostensibly tranquil world, and increas¬ ingly they afflict him with a sense of terror that he cannot explain to himself or to others. “My boy” comes to live much of his child¬ hood possessed by superstitious horror, and Howells, in an inversion of the “Immortality Ode,” suggests that “my boy dwelt most of his time amid shadows that were, perhaps, projected over his narrow * In this book as in his novels, Howells is concerned, of course, to render his subject realistically. In one of his rare discussions of juvenile literature, he deplores the kind of book that derives from “a painful search for the picturesque or the historic.” American children, he says, “should form their ideas of life and society and nature from books that paint our own conditions. . .” (“Recent Literature,” Atlantic Monthly, XLlIl, 123- 126, Jan., 1879). In the same vein Howells praises Thomas Bailey Aldrich’s The Story of a Bad Boy for “telling the story of a boy’s life with so great desire to show what a boy’s life is, and so little purpose of teaching what it should be.” Significantly, the quality Howells likes best in Aldrich’s book is the faithful depiction of boyhood’s “small in¬ terests,” “ignorant ambition,” “narrow horizon,” and “sense of isolation” {Atlantic Month¬ ly, XXV, 124-125, Jan., 1870). These are all, of course, characteristics of “my boy’s” life in Howells’s own book. 172 Tom H. Towers outlook from some former state of being, or from the gloomy minds of long-dead ancestors” (pp. 17-18). The book is filled with examples of the terror that binds How¬ ells. A schoolgirl cuts her hand on a butcher’s hook, and Howells is tortured by the recurring vision of the girl hanging impaled upon the hook (p. 58). In the midst of their idyllic swimming the boys fear the nonexistent water snakes (p. 31). A teacher whips a boy, and the event appears to Howells “the most hideous and depraving sight, except a hanging, that could be offered to children’s eyes. [The whipped boy] howled and shrieked, and leaped and danced, catching his back, his arms, his legs, as the strokes rained upon him, imploring, promising, and getting away at last . . .” (p. 60). How¬ ells sees the town constable shoot a stray dog: “The dog dropped over, and its heart’s blood flowed upon the ground and lay there in a pool. The boy ran into the house, with that picture forever printed in his memory” (p. 138). It is no exaggeration when How¬ ells says “my boy” “dwelt in a world of terrors” (p. 56) and “lived in an anguish of fear” (p. 60). The terror is rendered the more acute by the solitude in which it must be endured. Presumably the other boys suffer as greatly as “my boy” (p. 205); certainly they are equally careful to observe the rites of childhood superstition. Yet none can tell his friends, be¬ cause in fact he has no friends. “[My boy] had no friend among the boys; and I very much doubt whether small boys understand friendship, or can feel it ... in its tenderness and unselfishness. In fact they have no conception of generosity” (pp. 209-210). The same selfish instinct, the same unconsciousness of the humanity of others, that prevents the boy from sharing his misery with his com¬ rades also makes it impossible for him to discover a more private perspective that would make the burden tolerable. The boys, each thinking himself alone in a hostile universe, “were grave, like In¬ dians, for the most part; and they were noisy without being gay. They seldom laughed, except at the pain or shame of someone. . . . In fact, life was a very serious affair with them. They lived in a state of outlawry, in the midst of invisible terrors, and they knew no rule but that of might” (p. 211). For “my boy,” locked in his private torment, kindness is as im¬ possible as friendship or humor, and unconscious cruelty is virtually a way of life. In the scene of the drowning man, the death has no Moral Dimensions in A Boy’s Town 173 more significance for the young Howells than does the rainstorm in which it occurs. A few pages later Howells discusses the floods that come regularly to the Miami River, and he notes that for the boys there was no suffering, merely delight in the diversion from commonplace experience. The boys “had never connected [the river’s] rise with the rains they must have been having.” In a few days “there began to come the swollen bodies of horses and cattle. This must have meant serious loss to the people living on the river- bottoms above, but the boys counted it all gain” (pp. 28-29). Later the boys drive a dog mad by tieing a can to its tail (pp. 85-87). For the same reasons—curiosity and boredom—they harry a well-mean¬ ing teacher from his job and from the town (pp. 64-65). Only their weakness keeps the boys from greater cruelty, and Howells tells us that, contrary to the conventional notions about children, his boys “without realizing that it was evil, . . . meant more evil than it would have been possible for ten times as many boys to commit” (pp. 207-208). Howells’s boys are simply the younger versions of the men in Huchleberry Finn who cause Boggs to be murdered, and then defile his death, all for the sake of a Saturday distraction. Like Twain’s mob, Howells’s boys are incapable of moral conscious¬ ness because there is nothing in their lives but immediate physical experience. A boy hardly knows what harm is, and he does it mostly without real¬ izing that it hurts. He cannot invent anything, he can only imitate; and it is easier to imitate evil than good. You can imitate war, but how are you going to imitate peace? So a boy passes his leisure in contriving mischief. ... If a boy could find out some way of doing good, so that he could be active in it, very likely he would want to do good now and then; but as he cannot, he very seldom wants to do good. (p. 206) Nor is the child’s savagery confined to the lawless world of childhood. As the passage just quoted suggests, the boys appropri¬ ate to themselves whatever is most savage in the adult world. They share in the American dream of the frontier, and “there was not a boy in the Boy’s Town who would not gladly have turned from the town and lived in the woods if his mother had let him. . . . And they were always talking among themselves of how they would go farther West when they grew up, and be trappers and hunters” (p. 149). But it is not simple sylvan peace the boys envision when 174 Tom H. Towers they talk of “Oregon, where you could stand in your door and shoot deer and wild turkey, while a salmon big enough to pull you in was tugging away at the line you had set in the river that ran before the log-cabin” (p. 149). Above all, the West meant Indians, and Indians meant escape to “a world where people spent their lives in hunting and fishing and ranging the woods, and never grew up into the toils and cares that can alone make men of boys. They wished to escape these, as many foolish persons do among civilized nations, and they thought if they could only escape them they would be happy; they did not know that they would be merely savage . . (p. 151). Besides hankering after the moral irresponsibilty of the Indian, the boys venerate whatever is most primitive and least responsible in their own immediate environment. The only residents of Ham¬ ilton who live as the boys do are the town drunkards, the brawlers, and the rivermen—all explicitly or implicitly outside the sanction or control of the law. Though the boys worship these idlers, How¬ ells is careful to point out the human cost of the savage life. A single example will illustrate. A favorite sport among the “basin loafers” is axe-throwing, which Howells says they “had probably learned from the Indians” (p. 41). One day a pair of brothers, both rivermen and one a member of the “unhappy fraternity of town- drunkards,” fall to quarreling and one throws an axe at the other— and misses. The sober brother “did not lose an instant; while the axe still quivered in the wood, he hurled himself upon the drunk¬ ard, and did that justice on him which he would not ask from the law, perhaps because it was a family affair; perhaps because those wretched men were no more under the law than the boys were” (p.42). As the drunken brawlers are the boys’ idols—and the promise of what awaits the adult savage—so every boy hopes someday to become a part of one of the local militia companies. The boys pass long days playing at war, either against the “Bridish” or against the Indians; significantly, no boy willingly takes the more “civilized” side, each wishes to be either the rustic Colonial or, if it is a fron¬ tier “war,” the Indian. The militia companies with their brilliant, cheap uniforms seem to the boys to be the realization of their fan¬ tasies. Even when fancy yields to reality in the Mexican War, the boys continue to invest the “country-jakes” of the regular companies Moral Dimensions in A Boy’s Town 175 with the glamor of their dreams. Again Howells clearly condemns the boys’ savage ambitions: most obviously in his clear approval of William Cooper Howells’s vigorous anti-war position, and also in an incident in which Howells’s grandfather tears a military cap from “my boy’s” head and tramples it underfoot. “The boy was left with a wound that was sore till he grew old enough to know how true and brave a man his grandfather was in a cause where so many warlike hearts wanted courage” (pp. 125-126). In the fratri¬ cide, in the war, in the near-lynching mentioned earlier, we see the prospect for the savage life. Like life in Hobbesian nature it is ruled by cruelty, violence, and unreason, and, there is every reason to think, by that continuing terror that dominates in the life of “my boy.” For Howells there is no outward or environmental explanation for the savagery of the boys. Rather, cruelty and violence seem necessary parts of the primitive life of childhood. The village only allows those qualities to become more apparent than might be the case in the city, for in the village “the forces of good and evil were more openly arrayed against each other” (p. 118). But if the boys seem to speak for the necessary savagery into which all men are born, there are also other facets to the human character, and there is in the book the possibility of a better existence in which man can hope to become free from both outward harm and inward horror. The state which Howells sets over against savagery he calls civiliza¬ tion, by which he means not a cultural but a moral condition. II The two hallmarks of civilization in this book are self-knowl¬ edge and work—accepting both one’s human limitations and his human responsibilities. Self-knowledge is obviously the first step to easing the isolation that is so much a part of the savage ordeal, and after that comes the resolution to positive moral action that will at last alleviate the cruelty of savage life. The first thing you have to learn here below is that in essentials you are just like everyone else, and that you are different from others only in what is not so much worth while. . . . There is not really any difference between you and your fellow-creatures; but only a seeming difference that flatters and cheats you with a sense of your strangeness, and makes you think you are a remarkable fellow. 176 Tom H. Towers There is a difference between boys and men, but it is a difference of self-knowledge chiefly. A boy wants to do everything because he does not know he cannot; a man wants to do something because he knows he cannot do everything; a boy always fails, and a man sometimes suc¬ ceeds because the man knows and the boy does not know. (pp. 205-206) And manhood or civilization is attained by the moral will, not by aging alone. Howells repeatedly warns that many men are mere “grown-up boys” (p. 205) who “keep the ignorance of childhood after they have lost its innocence; heaven has been shut, but the earth is still a prison to them” (p. i). Elsewhere he affirms that “the great difference between a savage and a civilized man is work” (p. 151). William Cooper Howells and “my boy’s” older brother Joseph are the chief embodiments of civilization in the book. By precept and example they awaken Howells’s own better nature and show him the way out of the wilderness of terror. His father early in¬ structs Howells in the evil of inflicting pain, physical or otherwise; and more important, he shows his son that there is no hope or blame outside the self; each man is alone responsible for his moral condi¬ tion. For William Cooper Howells, along with the other “New Church people,” believed in “a hell, which each cast himself into if he loved the evil rather than the good, and that no mercy could keep him out of without destroying him, for a man’s love was his very self” (p. 12). As “my boy” yields to the savagery within him, he chooses evil, and the horror in which he lives is that very hell his Swedenborgian father had warned him against. His father’s example makes concrete for “my boy” the more abstract lesson of his lectures. In a town that is more Southern than Northern, William Cooper Howells preaches the abolition cause and makes his home a haven for runaway slaves. When his very livelihood depends upon his political regularity, he splits from the Whig party over its support of what he considers the pro-slavery Mexican War. (Significantly, it is this stand for “civilization” that causes the removal of the family from Hamilton, and provides die objective means of Howells’s final break from his savage child¬ hood.) Even though “my boy” can hardly understand the issues at stake in his father’s politics, there are repeated indications that in¬ tuitively he knows his father is right. Howells is struck through Moral Dimensions in A Boy’s Town 177 with remorse at the attack upon the Hamilton Negroes (pp. 129- 130), and he is moved, almost against his conscious will, by his father’s recitations from The Biglou/ Papers and by the anti-slavery speeches of Tom Corwin (pp. 127, 131). Joe is a less lofty, but perhaps a more powerful civilizing influ¬ ence upon his younger brother. Joe lives by a rule of universal con¬ fidence in mankind, “usefulness” to others, and an unswerving honesty that removes him from the small evasions that are a part of the boys’ play. Like the rest of the boys, Joe constantly undertakes schemes that come to “the same end of nothingness that awaits all boyish endeavor” (p. 186). But Joe’s schemes are distinguished from those of most boys by their unselfishness, and they fail, more often than not, because of the chicanery of others rather than be¬ cause of Joe’s vanity. The example of Joe’s confidence brings home to Howells the truth of his father’s theory that “people are more apt to be true if you trust them than if you doubt them” (p. 15). Besides exemplifying that trust that is one of the foundations of civilization, Joe has “an ideal of usefulness” and the “wish to help others”; he is “a calm light of common-sense, of justice, of truth,” and it is mainly through Joe’s example that Howells comes to learn that “he was sent into the world to serve and to suffer, as well as to rule and enjoy” (p. 185). Finally, under Joe’s tutelage “my boy” comes to grasp the pragmatic morality that helps to explain—and therefore to relieve—the savage terror; “I know that no good thing ever happened to happen to me when I had done wrong” (p. 35). Of course, the nature that can receive such lessons is latent within Howells, and presumably within all men, from the begin¬ ning. It is as real as the savagery in which the boys customarily live, but the good nature must be cultivated, while savagery grows un¬ tended. Howells’s natural goodness receives greatest emphasis in the account of his friendship with a backward, generally despised boy whose family live apart from town in a “belated log-cabin,” de¬ pendent for survival upon irregular odd jobs, charity, and perhaps Providence. Even Howells’s father, who normally represents civi¬ lized democracy, discourages “my boy” from this relationship be¬ cause it seems to lie wholly outside reality. The wild boy himself seems scarcely to exist in the sense of hav¬ ing a separate, distinguishing character or personality. “He never had any plans himself, and never any will but to go in swimming.” 178 Tom H. Towers He cares nothing for the organized games of the other boys, and “money could not have hired him to run races.” Nor does he relate to the nascent literary ambitions of the young Howells; “my boy could not have talked to him about any of the things that were in his books, or the fume of dreams they sent up in his mind.” In a way this nameless boy seems almost an alter ego of Howells him¬ self—the self that lives with nature, close to what Wordsworth calls “the life of things.” Indeed, he is described as being “like a piece of the genial earth.” And, like the uncorrupted earth, he is a source of goodness and of life; he “must have had great natural good in him” and “he had no bad impulses.” The wild boy’s effect upon Howells is exactly that of transcendent nature upon the Romantic poets: Howells “soothed against his soft, caressing ignorance the ache of his fantastic spirit [the anguish and the fear discussed earli¬ er], and reposed his intensity of purpose in that lax and easy aim¬ lessness” (p. 192). In the end, of course, the wild boy must be left behind. He can¬ not be accommodated to the world of men any more than the young Wordsworth’s “glad animal spirits” can survive amidst the “still, sad music of humanity.” But his existence helps to transform the savage young Howells. The friends eventually part, but before they do Howells attains to the moral strength to acknowledge pub¬ licly the wild boy. At last the boy comes to school, and “my boy,” who is mortally embarrassed even though he has urged his friend to “reform,” “took him into his seat, and owned his friendship with him before the whole school” (p. 192). Obviously this act is parallel to Basil March’s decision to stand by Lindau in A Hazard of New Fortunes (published the same year as A Boy’s Town). Like March’s, “my boy’s” decision speaks for a commitment to human community and to personal moral responsi¬ bility. But, again like March, the young Howells is relieved when circumstances release him from his duty. The wild boy “struggled through one day, and maybe another; but it was a failure from the first moment, and my boy breathed freer when his friend came one half-day, and then never came again” (p. 193). “The kindly earth- spirit,” Howells’s other self, must be put behind, but like Howells’s brother and his father the wild boy has helped to bring forth that natural goodness that at last brings “my boy” out of savagery into civilization. Moral Dimensions in A Boy’s Town 179 By the end of A Boy’s Town Howells is on the way to becoming a man who has lost the innocence of childhood but who has also transcended its moral ignorance. Prophetically, the other boys have begun to call him “The Old Man” (p. 238). When he was nearly eighty, looking back over his boyhood, Howells thought of “the ten or eleven years passed in Hamilton as the gladdest of all my years,” and all his life he tried out new pens by writing “Hamilton, Butler County, Ohio.”® But Howells never lets nostalgia dim his moral vision. In Old Times on the Mississippi, Twain leaves the innocence and wonder of youth ambiguously set off against the knowledge of maturity. The paradox of jelix culpa remains unre¬ solved, though Twain’s revulsion at the adult world weighs the issue in favor of childhood. Howells, perhaps less tortured—or per¬ haps more courageous—than his friend, sees clearly that if human¬ ity will survive, if we will avoid spiritual isolation and its attendant violence and terror, we must finally accept the moral obligations of our humanity. The doctrine of complicity as we find it in The Ministers Charge (1887) holds that all men are alike responsible for the evil of the world. As that doctrine appears in A Boy’s Town, it suggests that each man must undertake the task of overcoming his own savage egoism, must commit himself to the moral com¬ munity that Howells in this book calls civilization. For only then is the individual or his world at peace. “William Dean Howells, Years of My Youth (New York and London, 1916), pp. 16, 36. Transformations: TJoe Blithedale Romance to Howells and James Robert Emmet Long I I N HIS RECENT BOOK NovcUsts in u Changing World, Donald Stone has shown how the careers of Meredith and James during the i88o’s demonstrate the breakup of the Victorian era, Meredith’s novels celebrating a harmoniously integrated society after it no longer existed, and James’s emphasizing the individual rather than his relation to a larger social unit/ Novelists in a Changing World is a very discriminating study, but its discussion of The Bostonians in the single context of the English Victorian novel seems to me to slight James’s American literary background, and in particular to disregard Hawthorne’s important influence on the novel. Stone remarks that James had intended a very American tale in theme, but “a distinctly Victorian novel in style.” To support his argument, he points out the use, unusual for James, of an omniscient narrator who frequently intrudes on his narration, sometimes to look into a character’s mind, or to admit that he does not know what a character is thinking; and of James’s apparently “closed” ending that was more acceptable to an English audience than his previously “open” ones. He points out, also, that James’s satire in the novel has a Dickensian quality, a judgment with which one would be inclined to agree, particularly in James’s depiction of the group at Miss Birds¬ eye’s apartment, “Dickensian regulars,” as Stone calls them, who seem to preexist rather than to develop in the manner of James’s more usual characters. Mrs. Tarrant, whose brain succumbs to “vapors of social ambition” is especially Dickensian. (Stone does not mention—although he might well have—the lady librarian, an exemplar of Boston, whose name is Miss Catching.) He goes on to say that the novel’s heroine, in her passivity, “seems derived from Trollope’s heroines,” surely a conclusion he would not have reached ^Donald David Stone, Novelists in a Changing World (Cambridge, Mass., 1972). Howells and Henry James i 8 i if he had given more attention to James’s American Jiterary back¬ ground. Indeed, Stone’s whole chapter on The Bostonians appears to have been written with a less than full awareness of the trans¬ formations occurring within the American novel after the Civil War —both the transpositions from Hawthorne to Howells and James, and the transformations taking place between Howells and James themselves. In the emerging realism after the war, there was a frequent inter¬ play between Howells and James. James found in Howells an “un¬ erring” sense of American life and character, and at various times took clues from him in his treatment of native themes. It was Howells, not James, who first created “the American girl,” appear¬ ing first as Kitty Ellison (A Chance Acquaintance, 1871), and again as Florida Vervain {A Foregone Conclusion, 1873), this time in an international setting, before James created her more enduringly in Daisy Miller (1878). Moreover, A Foregone Conclusion, with its romantic, doomed central figure in Italy, contrasted with Ferris, who cannot engage himself deeply in life, also anticipates Roderick^ Hud¬ son (1875). A discussion of thematic similarities between Howells and James might be elaborated if space permitted, but one might mention here only one instance of it in the i88o’s—Howells’s con¬ cern through the decade with neurotic young New England women. Marcia Gaylord {A Modern Instance, 1882), the high-strung daughter of a rigid and forbidding father who comes out of a Cal¬ vinist background, is the most striking instance of this type, but she is only one character among a group of others. Alice Posner {April Hopes, 1888) and Annie Kilburn {Annie Kilburn, 1888) have rest¬ less New England consciences; and Helen Harkness {A Woman’s Reason, 1883) literally admits that she cannot be happy until she has known misfortune and self-sacrifice. In Dr. Breen’s Practice (1881), there are several neurotic New England women, one who has driven herself until she has become a nervous invalid. Grace Breen’s mother is described as “an old lady, who had once kept a vigilant conscience for herself; but after making her life unhappy with it for some three-score years, now applied it entirely for the exasperation and condemnation of others. She especially devoted it to fretting a New England girl’s naturally morbid sense of duty in her daughter.” Grace Breen takes up the practice of medicine not i82 Robert Emmet Long because she enjoys tending the sick (in fact, she does not at all), but because she feels that arduous altruism is a social duty. “At the end,” Howells writes, “she was a Puritan; belated, misdated, if the reader will, cast upon good works which the Puritans formerly found in a creed.” Howells’s portrayals during the i88o’s of neurotic young New England women, driven by a sense of duty to the point of self-sacri¬ fice, are extremely relevant to James’s characterization of Olive Chancellor in The Bostonians. The interplay between Howells and James is complicated, how¬ ever, by the interest they both showed in Hawthorne. Howells took particular pride in comparing Hawthorne to the best of En¬ gland’s novelists, and referred to him often as a standard of achieve¬ ment to be emulated. “When you’ve a fame as great as Hawthorne’s,” Howells wrote to James in 1869, as they were both beginning their careers, “you won’t forget who was the first, warmest and truest of your admirers, will you?” Howells also studied Hawthorne as an interpreter of American experience, and his own fiction at various points shows Hawthorne’s influence. It can be seen, for example, in the gothic atmosphere of The Shadow of a Dream, and in the plot of The Son of Royal Langbrith, which appears to have been con¬ structed on the scaffolding of T he House of the Seven Gables. There are also passages in certain other works where Howells projects his characters’ inner states in a way that is evocative of Hawthorne. In A Foregone Conclusion, for example, Don Ippolito’s spiritual crisis is projected imagistically through the setting of a dream-reality garden. In the ambiguous nature of his release from the confinement of tradition, and the suggestive play of light and darkness, he seems like one of Hawthorne’s characters who suffer the torment of inner conflict: The moon painted his lifted face with a pallor that his black robes heightened. He fetched a long sighing breath, as if he inhaled with that respiration all the rich odours of the flowers, blanched like his own visage in the white lustre, as if he absorbed into his heart at once the wide glory of the summer night, and the beauty of the young girl at his side. It seemed a supreme moment with him; he looked as a man might look who has climbed out of life-long defeat into a single instant of release and triumph. The use which Howells makes of The Blithedale Romance in The Undiscovered Country (1880) is part of a larger pattern of trans- Howells and Henry James 183 formation, but it has special importance because it is implicated in a translation of The Blithedale Romance by both Howells and James. The heroine of The Undiscovered Country, Egeria Boynton, is a descendant of Priscilla, the “snow maiden” of The Blithedale Romance; she is in fact a translation of Priscilla into realism. Like Priscilla, she acts as the passive trance-medium of a mesmerist, and is exhibited in public, before she is liberated later into the world of actuality. Moreover, both novels are set in Boston, and the country¬ side beyond it, and are concerned with forms of sham life, illustrated in part by the public performances of mesmerists and spiritualists. At one point, Hawthorne’s Coverdale attends an exhibition at which professor Westervelt speaks of holding “intercourse with spirits.” He remarks, however: “The epoch of rapping spirits, and all the wonders that followed in their train—such as tables upset by in¬ visible agencies, bells self-tolled at funerals, and ghostly music performed on Jew’s harps—had not yet arrived” (p. 283).^ Which is to say that they already had when Hawthorne was writing The Blithedale Romance, a criticism of his own period. In 1850, the Fox sisters of Rochester, New York (“the Rochester Rappings”), began a series of seances in New York City and there¬ after toured the United States and Europe. Hawthorne knew of them, as well as of Daniel Dunglas Home who even as a youth gained fame in New England as a spiritualist who could produce rappings, table movings, and other psychic phenomena. In Victoria’s Heyday, ]. B. Priestly has described the spiritualist craze in New England, which then swept to England at the beginning of the 1850’s: Beginning with the Fox sisters, Kate and Margaret, from 1848 onwards, America produced hundreds of mediums, some of them children, all of them holding regular seances. In every town there were darkened rooms in which luminous spirit faces appeared, and musical instruments played themselves, strange voices were heard prophesying, hands materialized from nowhere, and the faithful shivered in drafts of Arctic air. . . . New revelations were needed, and the Eastern states of America . . . were buzzing with strange cults and Utopias. Young D. D. Home was only -Parenthetical page references are to the following texts: Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance, Vol. VIII, The Complete Writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Old Manse Edition (Boston, 1900); William Dean Howells, The Undiscovered Country (Boston, 1880); Henry James, The Bostonians (New York, 1945, orig. 1886). 184 Robert Emmet Long another of these spirit miracle-workers, though it was not long before he became the most impressive of them. . . . During the next two years, visiting many New England towns and being lionized everywhere. Home went from strength to strength, making furniture float around, materializing spirit hands, and levitating not only tables but himself too. It is this contemporary spiritualist craze in New England which Hawthorne treats in his novel as symptomatic of a larger evasion of fundamental reality. He describes the Veiled Lady ironically as “a phenomenon in the mesmeric line; one of the earliest that had indicated the birth of a new science, or the revival of an old hum¬ bug” (p. i) and Westervelt, who exhibits her, has a professor title that is bogus, like his whole appearance, which changes radically when he puts on a pair of spectacles. As Westervelt tells his audience of the new spiritualism, Coverdale remarks: “It was eloquent, in¬ genious, plausible, with a delusive show of spirituality, yet really imbued throughout with a cold and dead materialism. I shivered, as at a current of chill air issuing out of a sepulchral vault. . . . He spoke of a new age that was dawning upon the world; an era that would link soul to soul, and the present life to what we call futurity” (p. 85). In The Undiscovered Country, Howells treats the same phenomenon of spiritualism, relating it, as Hawthorne had done, to the theme of deception, but also placing it in the particular context of the culture of Boston. Howells’s novel opens upon the scene of a Boston seance, complete with the materialization of spirit hands; and there is about it all—the people present, the building, the neighborhood—an atmosphere of humbug. The street, house, and characters present are depicted as tokens of a social decay, a dis¬ integration of Boston’s former culture, a decline of religious integrity into bohemian eccentricity. Although Howells has adapted Hawthorne’s material realistically, there are some traces of Hawthorne still visible. The opening scene begins with the appearance of Egeria Boynton, a pale, blonde maiden dressed, not unlike Priscilla, in a “theatrical robe of white serge,” in the parlor of the house. Her father is with her, a short man with small hands, “a mouth of delicacy and refinement, and a smile of infantine sweetness” (p. 4). His “exquisite . . . child-like” smile suggests his credulous nature before the rest of the novel confirms it. Before Dr. Boynton places his daughter in a mesmeric trance. Howells and Henry James 185 and the seance begins, other characters arrive, including Mrs. Le Roy, the landlady; Mr. Weatherby, who has a special interest in levitation; and Mr. Eccles, a “scientist” of spiritualism who when he opens his mouth to speak reveals a “lavish display of an upper and lower set of artificial teeth” (p. 17). Howells refers in this section to his “dental smile,” and, in an image that seems to depersonalize him, of his “setting his artificial teeth to smile,” and he is thus reminiscent of Westervelt, whose smile reveals a gold band running along the upper part of his teeth that suddenly makes his whole being seem a sham. Present at the seance, too, is Ford, the caustic and skeptical journalist, who finds the performance a hoax, and thereafter decides to expose its fraudulence publicly. From that moment he enters into contention with Dr. Boynton, which con¬ tinues through the rest of the novel, and is, in fact, a contest to see which of them shall dominate and possess Fgeria. The complicated struggle of wills in The BUthedale Romance has been simplified in The Undiscovered Country to this focal issue. Ford is Howells’s version of Hollingsworth, who rescues Priscilla from the wizard Westervelt, with the difference that Ford, rather than being a crank philanthropist, is a crank journalist, out of sympathy with the Boston life. He is caustic, virile, hard-minded, and extremely critical of his fellow Bostonians, who seem to him to belong to an “effeminized” age. His one friendship, an incongru¬ ous one, is with Phillips, whose connoisseur existence implies a de¬ cline of vitality. Phillips’s father had been in wholesale trade, and left him well enough provided for that he can live a leisured life, and indulge his appreciation of exquisite things like bric-a-brac, paintings, and colonial clocks. At one point. Ford tells Phillips that he and Mr. Fccles are much alike. “He is a brother dilettante, it seems. He dabbles in ghosts as you dabble in bricabrac” (p. 86). Fccles and Phillips are, indeed, symptomatic of Boston in the after- math of its heroic age. In this early section of The Undiscovered Country, one sees not only how Howells has adapted Hawthorne’s material, and inter¬ preted his characters in terms of modern realism, but also how Howells’s characters prepare for James’s in The Bostonians. How¬ ells’s mesmerist and his daughter who perform at gatherings in Boston look ahead to Dr. Tarrant and Verena; Phillips prefigures Robert Emmet Long 186 Mr. Pardon and the other young Bostonians delicat; Ford becomes Basil Ransom, who also “rescues” a trance maiden. James’s satire and characters are incomparably more vivid, but the diagram of their relationship has already been drawn by Howells. In his chapter on The Blithedale Romance and The Bostonians in The Complex Fate, Marius Bewley has discussed James’s transposition of character types from Hawthorne’s novel to his own; but he leaves out How- ells’s novel as the crucial middle stage of transformation. Had he included it, he would have been able to make an even more persua¬ sive case, and have given a stronger definition to the process of trans¬ formation. After this early part of The Undiscovered Country, Howells be¬ gins to develop his theme of the heroine’s dormant nature, which involves a fairy tale element, a version of Sleeping Beauty. Ford’s belligerency toward the spiritualists before long results in a victory for him, when he forces Mrs. Le Roy to admit that she had produced the supernatural manifestations at the seance, after which Ford and Phillips engage in a discussion of Egeria’s nature, which has the effect of giving her further affinities with Priscilla: “The girl [Phillips says] is such a deliciously abnormal creature. It is girlhood at odds with itself. If she had been her father’s ‘subject’ ever since childhood, of course none of the ordinary young girl interests have entered into her life. She hasn’t known the delight of dress and dancing; she hasn’t had ‘attentions’; .... It means that she’s kept a child-like simplicity, and that she could go on, and help out her father’s purposes, no matter how tricky they were, with no more sense of guilt than a child who makes believe talk with imaginary visitors. Yes, [5/2